


and I will not come back the same

by napricot



Series: where they hang the lights [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Relationships, Character Death Fix, F/M, Fix-It, Flashbacks, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Quests, Soul Stone (Marvel), Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 36,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25535614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/napricot/pseuds/napricot
Summary: “There are tales, yes, of people undertaking quests with or for the Soul Stone, but they are cautionary ones. There is a reason the Soul Stone, of all the Stones, has remained hidden and unused for so long,” said Thor, disconcertingly solemn. “You know how high the cost was to gain it, to use it. It demands much, and from those who fail to provide what it demands, it takes much. You need only see the Stone’s current guardian to see that.”From Thor of all people, this was a grave warning. Steve wasn’t about to let it dissuade him though.“I have to try. I can’t give up on her, Thor. Natasha helped save the whole damn universe, I can’t—she deserves to have someone fight for her. If we could bring all the others back, then we have to—she should be here too.”Steve had made the mistake of giving up once before. He wouldn’t do it again.How Steve gets Natasha back, and how they both come back home.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Series: where they hang the lights [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1850212
Comments: 97
Kudos: 271





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The National's "Where Is Her Head". 
> 
> This is a companion fic to [gator around the warm beds of beginners](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21621103), but you don't have to have read that one first, or at all, really. It's just what Sam and Bucky are up to while Steve's off trying to get Natasha back. (What they are up to is failing at being FWB by being Good Boyfriends.)
> 
> This fic is mostly complete and should be posted within a week or so. As usual, I need to stop poking at earlier parts and finish the damn thing.

Steve watched as Thor carefully set the six most powerful objects in the universe into an unremarkable metal briefcase.

“You’re certain you wish to return them alone?” asked Thor. “If we but wait another week, Dr. Pym can provide more than enough of the Pym Particles for someone to go with you.”

“No point risking it,” said Steve. “And the more people go with me, the more chances there are for something to go wrong and more timelines to splinter. I can handle going alone, Thor. Putting the Stones back should be a hell of a lot easier than taking them in the first place.”

Thor hummed and nodded, closing the briefcase. He set Mjolnir on top of it, the only necessary security measure. After all, only the two of them could lift it.

“And is that all you’re going to do?”

Steve met Thor’s mismatched eyes. They were solemn and sad, but full of fondness too, and weary understanding, and that gave Steve the strength to answer honestly.

“No. I’m going to try to get Natasha back.”

Thor raised an eyebrow. “Not by meddling with time, I hope.”

“Of course not,” Steve said. He had no intention of depriving some other timeline of its Natasha, not that any version of Natasha herself would ever allow it even if he tried. “I—I was going to try to use the Soul Stone. I know everyone says it’s not possible, that it won’t let us bring Natasha back, but if it’s so powerful, there has to be _something_ I can do _._ I have to try to get her back.”

He was trying to sound like he knew what he was doing, but the certainty and steadiness of his Captain America voice wouldn’t come. This was just Steve, bare of the shield and the cowl, desperate and furious, unwilling to believe that Natasha was truly dead and gone. And Thor, Thor who had lost even more than Steve and gotten none of it back, did not say anything kind and condescending about the denial stage of grief, or about accepting Natasha’s death.

No, Thor frowned and said, “The Soul Stone is the most mysterious and fickle of all the Stones, Steve. It won’t easily relinquish a sacrifice made to it. Have care before you attempt to use it, lest you lose more than you have already lost.”

That wasn’t a _no_. Hope began to flower, sending up fragile buds through the stone of Steve’s stubborn denial. He leaned towards Thor, eager for any clues.

“But is it _possible_? Are there any stories, is there anything to suggest—”

“There are tales, yes, of people undertaking quests with or for the Soul Stone, but they are cautionary ones. There is a reason the Soul Stone, of all the Stones, has remained hidden and unused for so long,” said Thor, disconcertingly solemn. “You know how high the cost was to gain it, to use it. It demands much, and from those who fail to provide what it demands, it takes much. You need only see the Stone’s current guardian to see that.”

From Thor of all people, this was a grave warning. Steve wasn’t about to let it dissuade him though.

“I have to _try_. I can’t give up on her, Thor. Natasha helped save the whole damn universe, I can’t—she deserves to have someone fight for her. If we could bring all the others back, then we have to—she should be here too.”

Steve had made the mistake of giving up once before. He wouldn’t do it again.

* * *

_Before:_

“So you’re giving up?” asks Natasha.

The Avengers Compound command center hums around them, never wholly silent as it continues with its programmed routines and scans, searching for energy signatures and threats and the impossible miracle they would need to save the lost. The number of the lost—the _dead_ —is a constantly increasing ticker on one of the command center’s many screens. Steve doesn’t know why they bother to keep it up; the number is too big to fathom, and they know what it represents anyway. Half of Earth’s entire population. More than half, even. The collateral damage of Thanos’s genocide grows every hour.

“I’m not giving up, I’m facing reality.” He points to the still slowly climbing number of the dead. “We _lost_ , Natasha. It’s over. Thanos is dead, the Infinity Stones are gone, there’s no _fixing_ this.”

“Not with that attitude,” she says, a shaky and hurt attempt at her old sly humor. It doesn’t sit well on her pale and haggard face. Steve had long since seen behind the facade of effortlessly cool Agent Romanoff, but even so, it’s a bit of a shock to see it so thoroughly destroyed now.

“It’s _over,_ Nat,” Steve repeats. “The war’s over. There’s no one and nothing left to fight. Sam, Bucky, Wanda, Fury, all the others—we lost them. And we’re not getting them back.”

Just saying the words turns him hollow, ravaged—tearing something out of him that will not heal, that will not grow back. Steve had almost wanted this, once: the end of fighting. Talk about a wish on a fucking monkey’s paw.

Natasha sets her jaw, and meets his eyes. “I’m not going to stop trying to fix this. Someone has to try, Steve.”

“We already tried! We failed!”

“So we _try again_.”

She’s wan, more desperate and beaten down than Steve’s ever seen her, but resolve is burning in her brighter than any flame. Steve feels like ashes in comparison, the remnants of a fire that ended up burning out uselessly just when it was most needed.

“I _can’t_. I—I just can’t. I’m _done_ , I can’t—”

Natasha’s eyes widen in fear. “Don’t—you don’t mean you’re going to—to do something stupid, Steve, you can’t—”

“No!” Steve says. “No, I’m not—I’m sticking around, alright?” he reassures her.

This is one promise Steve can make her at least, and if he makes the promise just to hold himself to it, just to have that one last excuse to keep living in this half-ravaged remnant of a world, in this stubbornly unkillable flesh—well, no one else needs to know that.

“I’m just—I’m done Avenging. There’s no avenging any of this. There’s no war left to fight.”

He braces himself for Natasha’s anger, for her disappointment, both of which he more than deserves right now. Instead, he gets her kindness, the rare softness that she usually guards so closely, but that she always gives him when she thinks he needs it.

“I know,” she says, and smiles. It’s a tiny and wavering thing, but it’s still a smile. “It’s okay, Steve. Whatever you need. But this is what _I_ need. And I don’t want to do it alone.”

Her smile falters then, a few tears escaping from her eyes, and for just a moment, Steve’s grief fades, eclipsed and outshined by a bright and searing tenderness. Natasha’s always wrestled strength out of weakness: using her smaller size to her advantage in a fight, using her reputation to keep people off balance, and moments like this, right now, when she’s brave enough to show Steve her vulnerability, when, despite every reason she has to distrust people, she’s strong enough to say she needs them. That she needs him.

And he needs her too.

“I’m sticking around,” he says again, and when she holds out a shaking hand, he goes to her.

* * *

He’d kept his promise to Natasha. He’d stuck around, he’d found a way to live in a ravaged world, had even managed to stay useful by running support groups and helping with recovery efforts. But he hadn’t helped Natasha much.

They’d had a few arguments about it, in the five terrible years after the Decimation: Steve telling Natasha she had to stop torturing herself with impossibilities, and Natasha telling him his despair was selfish and useless. Each time, they’d retreat to their respective corners to lick their wounds, then Steve would return to the Compound, and Natasha would smile at him, sweet and sharp and sad, and welcome him back.

She’d been right, in the end, not to give up. She’d been right to chase the impossible. And while it was too late now to make up for not staying in that fight with her, Steve could make the impossible happen for her, Steve could save her, maybe.

Steve had to save her.

* * *

Steve checked in with each member of the team who’d participated in the time heist for a refresher debrief on exactly when and where he should return the Stones. He couldn’t risk running into any of them while they were taking the Stones—Steve was pretty sure that was the kind of paradox that would lead to disaster—and he wanted to make sure he had as complete a picture of what he’d be walking into as possible. So Thor, Bruce and Rhodey duly gave him as much detail as they could recall, and Bruce drilled him on the coordinates until they were both satisfied that Steve had them memorized.

Steve left talking to Clint for last.

He didn’t blame Clint for what had happened on Vormir. He knew that, as Peggy had once said about Bucky, he had to allow Natasha the dignity of her choice, and Natasha had chosen to be the sacrifice to win the Soul Stone. And yet, seeing Clint, Steve could only think _it should have been you_.

Clint could read it on his face, maybe, because he greeted Steve with a bitter, weary smile, and a half-nod that seemed to say, _yeah, it should’ve_. The return of his family had eased only some of the deep, harsh lines of pain and anger on his face, and his shoulders were still heavy with his guilt and shame.

“I’m sorry, Cap,” he said. “I should’ve been faster, I should’ve stopped her—”

Steve couldn’t listen to this, not if he wanted to keep it together. “It’s alright, Barton. Just—just tell me about Vormir, about the Soul Stone.”

“Don’t know how you’re gonna return the damn thing, to be honest. Toss it off the cliff, shove it up that ghost dude’s ass, I don’t care. Just—bring Nat back, okay?” Steve looked at Clint with some alarm. Did he know what Steve intended to do? But no, Clint continued, “She deserves to be laid to rest here. She deserves the same kinda funeral Stark’s about to get.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. I’ll bring her back.” One way or another.

“She deserves to still be alive,” said Clint. “But it was like—it was like she didn’t think she was worth it. Worth dying for. I’d’ve done it though, Cap, I swear I would’ve.”

“I know, Clint, I know. I would’ve too. But you know Nat: she was always thinking about the red in her ledger,” murmured Steve.

Steve knew what she must have been thinking in that moment: of the red in her ledger, and the weight of her life against Clint’s. She’d have thought of Clint’s family, and the family she’d made with the Avengers, and she’d have decided that Clint’s family would need him more, when they returned, a perfectly Natasha calculation, equal parts cold and compassionate. But Steve was Natasha’s family, wasn’t he? And he needed her too. It was an ugly, small thought to have—Clint had young kids, for god’s sake—and Steve hated himself for having it. Still, he couldn’t quite shove that plaintive, raging need down into silence.

“Yeah. I’m no accountant, but I figured—she was even, right? She was in the black? She helped saved the world so many damn times. But me—” Clint broke off with a furious, choked off sob, and hid his face in his hands. He took a couple of shuddering breaths then lowered his hands. “Just—bring her home. She’s—there’s a cliff. At the top, where the ghost guy is, there’s a cliff. And a drop. She’s—she’s at the bottom. You should—you have to—”

Her body. Clint was talking about Natasha’s body. Because Natasha was dead.

Steve tried to imagine it, tried to imagine climbing down and gathering up her broken body, and he couldn’t, he couldn’t, Steve had survived the Arctic ice and losing Bucky again and again and losing Peggy and losing Sam, and the Decimation and so many wars, but he couldn’t survive that, he just couldn’t. Steve had a limit, and this was it, maybe.

“I’ll bring her home,” Steve told Clint.

* * *

_Before:_

“What will you do, when we get everyone back?”

It’s late, late enough that they should be getting what little rest they can, but Steve and Natasha are still lingering in the messy conference room, double and triple-checking research. Steve’s reviewingthe surveillance footage of Stark Tower after the Chitauri invasion to try to account for every second of the scepter’s whereabouts, but Natasha’s question is more interesting. He looks at Natasha, his eyebrows rocketing up in surprise as he processes her words.

“When, not if?” he asks.

It’s a far more reckless hope than he’s used to hearing from Natasha, and her face is bright with an almost giddy anticipation, one of her eyebrows lifted like she’s daring him to hope with her. It’s a much more dangerous dare than her usual kind; Steve would feel less trepidation about launching her off his shield and onto an alien spaceship than he does right now, when she’s asking him to hope for the impossible with her.

“Yeah,” she says. “Let’s try some optimism for once, c’mon. So what’ll you do? Let’s take all the hugging and crying and touching reunion stuff as a given, so after all that.”

“I don’t know,” he says honestly, because he can’t even imagine it. “Whatever you’re doing, I guess.”

Natasha laughs and rolls her eyes, then sees that he’s serious. “Oh? And what do you think I’ll be doing?”

“I don’t know,” he says again, smiling now. “I just know there’s no one else I’d rather be with, after.” He expects some kind of dry and arch comment from Natasha after that, maybe something about how he’s such a sap, but instead, Natasha goes pink and pleased, and it’s like her blush is contagious, because Steve feels his own face heat too. He clears his throat and says, “So: what’re you gonna be doing?”

“I have a place in Brooklyn, did you know?”

“A safe house?”

Natasha pauses, tilts her head. “Yeah, I guess. Anyway, I figure we’d go there. Me, you, Sam, Bucky, Wanda, whoever else wants to come. And we’d have, I don’t know, a dinner party. Nothing fancy. Just—all of us, together. No disasters, no being on the run…just us.” She smiles, wry and self-deprecating. “Not exactly on brand, I know.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugs. “It’s a pretty boring, dumb thing to want, I guess. No big plan, no huge celebration. Hell, retired or not, Tony’ll probably want, like, a week-long party with parades and fireworks, the full Iron Man treatment.”

“Yeah, sure, but that’s not your style,” says Steve.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. A boring dinner party where we try to actually cook something nice is your style. I know you.”

Natasha goes still for a moment, looking at him closely the exact same way she had years ago, during the whole mess with HYDRA and SHIELD and Project Insight, when they’d first decided to trust each other: surprised, searching, a little afraid. Then all that falls away to leave a wondering and almost shy smile, as lovely as spring’s first bloom, and as hopeful. He wishes, for a moment, that he could cup that smile gently between his palms, shelter it against their long winter’s lingering bitterness. Natasha herself doesn’t often need protection, but her happiness, rare and precious as it is, does. Steve wants her to be happy, Steve wants both of them to have reason to be happy.

“You do know me, don’t you,” she murmurs, and then, before the oddly bright and crystalline moment can transform into something Steve doesn’t understand, she continues, “So, you going to help me cook for this dinner party? We’re gonna have to make something that won’t make Sam disappointed in us.”

Indulging this dream hurts almost too much to stand, like hope is a muscle that he’s let atrophy and he’s straining it now. He tries, for Natasha’s sake.

“Bucky too, he helped out in the village kitchen in Wakanda a lot, he’s gonna be tough to impress. And yeah. Yeah, of course. Should be easy, after saving the universe,” he says, and tries to believe it can happen. He doesn’t quite succeed. 

Natasha must see his doubt, because she takes his hand in hers, and squeezes it hard. “We can do this, Steve. We can get them back.”

Well, Steve’s not sure how much of a contribution he can make here. His shield and his body don’t feel like enough; they sure as hell hadn’t been before. But Natasha has faith and hope enough to share with him, so he squeezes her hand right back.

“We can do this,” he echoes.

* * *

After the Avengers said one last goodbye to Tony, it was time to return the Infinity Stones.

As Steve walked back to the lake house to gear up for the trip, Bucky fell in step beside him, a silent and steady comfort. The reality of him, of his return, was almost too much for Steve to handle. He had to look at Bucky sideways, in quick glances, as if, like staring at the sun, looking at him too long would blind Steve. Even when they got to the lake house and Steve began to strip off his funeral suit and gear up for the mission, he could scarcely look at Bucky. Because if he looked, what if he saw, what if Bucky wasn’t real and solid and alive after all, what if—

Before Steve could get the quantum wristband on, a tremor started in his hands, then travelled up his arms and down his spine and into his chest, until his lungs were heaving with it.

Bucky stepped in front of Steve and grasped his shaking hands. Bucky’s hands were warm and solid—one smooth, dense vibranium and one living skin—and Steve held onto them tightly, too tightly.

“Hey, you’re alright, Steve,” he said, and his voice was so calm and certain that Steve could almost believe him.

“Bucky, I—”

“Shh, you’re okay, we’re okay,” Bucky said, and then he held Steve, as easy and unselfconscious with his affection and his support as he’d been before all their wars. It was a miracle. Everything about Bucky was a miracle. “Dunno why you always try to white knuckle your way through this kinda thing. It’s okay to cry, Steve. I’ve got you.”

Steve couldn’t manage it, at first. Grief was a well that never ran dry, but at some point in the last five years, it was like his body had given up on processing it, like the grief was a bullet his body had taken in, a barrage of bullets, and had never bothered to try to push back out again. It was still inside of him, a heavy leaden lump that weighed him down, but of course, here was Bucky too, taking some of that weight in his strong arms. So Steve let go.

Bucky and Sam and Wanda and so many others were back, and yet Steve’s grief for their loss was still inside of him, jumbled up with his new mourning for Tony and Natasha, and all of it together came out of him like it was breaking him apart. Bucky held fast against the onslaught, holding him close and tight, murmuring soothing words, until some of the terrible grief of the last five years eased and made room for the loss of Tony and Natasha to grow roots inside of him.

There was no way to save Tony, but Natasha—maybe Steve could save her. What was the point of all the damned power of the Infinity Stones if Steve couldn’t save Natasha? She had fought so hard for the world, had never given up on hope. And she was still so needed. Steve needed her, this team needed her. All those kids she’d helped after the Decimation had left them orphaned needed her. The proof of death’s impermanence was right here in Steve’s arms, in the miracle of a life Bucky had snatched from death at least three times running. Was Steve just being unforgivably greedy, to hope for yet another miracle?

Maybe so. But he’d do a hell of a lot worse for Natasha. She deserved to live in the world she’d saved. She deserved to come home.

He pulled away from Bucky, murmuring, “I’m okay now. Thanks.”

Bucky made a dubious kind of humming noise, but he let Steve slip away to the bathroom to wash up, and he was still there when Steve came back.

“You know, I could go with you,” said Bucky.

The thought was too tempting: Bucky at his side, helping him return the Stones, watching his back. Him and Bucky, unstuck in time together for once, instead of apart. He couldn’t risk another mess like the first Time Heist though, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to risk Bucky.

“Thanks, Buck, but it’s best if I go alone. Least chance of messing with timelines that way.”

Bucky accepted this with a furrowed brow and a frown. “Time travel,” he muttered to himself, and shook his head.

Steve finished gearing up, and Bucky helped him get all the buckles and snaps of the quantum suit tightened up, turning Steve with a touch to his shoulder so he could secure the straps that would hold Steve’s pack in place. When Steve turned back towards Bucky, quantum suit fully buckled in and secure, Bucky went very still, his clear-eyed gaze going sharp and searching.

Steve swallowed hard and tried not to fidget. He still wasn’t quite used to this look from Bucky. Oh, Bucky had always had keen eyes, and an unerring ability to see through Steve’s bullshit. But before, Bucky had covered that sharpness with sly teasing and distracting smiles. Now, Bucky didn’t bother. He hid nothing in the lambent clarity of his eyes, and didn’t let anyone else hide either. Bucky, Steve began to suspect, knew exactly what Steve was planning to do.

“There you go,” said Bucky softly. Steve murmured his thanks and braced himself for some horribly insightful comment that would lay Steve bare, or even for the beginning of an argument, but instead Bucky asked, “That a new uniform? Can’t say the white’s really a good look for you, Steve.”

“I—it’s new, yeah.” He swallowed hard against the fresh grief rising in his throat. “Tony made us the quantum suits.”

Bucky’s stillness didn’t ease, and his expression was inscrutable. Just as Steve began to worry that something was wrong, all that stillness melted away and Bucky nodded, almost as if to himself.

“Alright. Just—be careful.”

“Of course. I’ll be back before you know it.”

* * *

Sam was waiting for them at the quantum tunnel platform. He still had a faintly bewildered and overwhelmed look about him, and Steve’s heart ached for him. That Sam now had to deal with even this milder version of Steve and Bucky’s own displacement in time hurt. Five years wasn’t so long, in the grand scheme of things, but Steve knew from experience: the loss hadn’t hit Sam yet. Not of the last five years, and not of Natasha. Steve really hoped he could render that particular loss moot, at least. For now, Sam was putting on a brave face, doing his best to be strong and steady, and he was mostly succeeding.

“Sure you don’t want to wait a bit before going all Bill and Ted? You’re time traveling anyway, the Infinity Stones will keep if you take a few days or a week to, you know, take a breather,” Sam said. His tone was light, but he was frowning in concern. “Hell, are you sure you don’t want a Ted for this excellent adventure?”

“I don’t understand that reference,” lied Steve with a somewhat strained grin.

“Yeah, yeah, sure, old man,” said Sam.

It got harder and harder to say no to each person who offered to go with Steve on this trip through time. The desire for someone to hang onto, for one stable point when even time was out of joint, made Steve’s heart pound with something close to panic. He wanted, desperately, for Sam to come with him, to have Sam’s humor and sense of purpose and kindness at his side again. Sam made even heavy work lighter, and so often in the last five years, Steve had asked himself _what would Sam do?_ Steve could never hope to match Sam’s warmth, but god, he’d tried, and now, selfishly, Steve wanted to keep that warmth with him, to have someone help him carry this weight of grief and responsibility.

But Steve just took a breath and found his resolve again. Steve couldn’t endanger Sam, or any other timeline, with this insane mission. For five years, Natasha had been Steve’s stable point. Natasha had been the one who’d kept him alive, kept him going. If he had to go it alone to get her back, he would.

So he said his goodbyes to Sam and Bucky, hoping they’d only be goodbyes for him, that however long this took Steve, Sam and Bucky would see him again in a few seconds, none the wiser.

When Bucky said, soft and sad, “I’m gonna miss you,” Steve’s doubts really took hold.

His hand spasmed on Bucky’s shoulder in a brief impulse to hang on to Bucky and never let go. It was Bucky who let Steve go though, and there was nothing but a sorrowing kind of understanding in his eyes as he did it. Bucky knew. Steve didn’t know how, didn’t know what, exactly, he knew, but Bucky _knew_. And he wasn’t stopping Steve. Was that Bucky’s faith, or his resignation? Steve couldn’t tell.

They shared their usual call and response, and Steve wasn’t sure if the echo of their words from so many decades ago was a good omen, or a bad one. Doubts or no doubts though, Steve still had to return Mjolnir and the Stones. So he took one more look at Sam and Bucky, fixing the sight of them in his heart, a bulwark against doubt and grief, and activated the quantum wristband.

* * *

To Steve’s relief, returning the Stones was a hell of a lot easier than stealing them in the first place. He had an easy time of it and managed to get most of them back without anyone the wiser, until it came to returning the Power Stone and Mjolnir in Asgard. Returning Mjolnir at least was easy enough: he only had to set it down somewhere out of the way. It would come to Thor whenever he called it next, no matter where he was on Asgard. So Steve found a suitably shadowy alcove in one of the palace hallways, and set Mjolnir gently down. He gave it one last fond and wistful stroke—calling down the lightning had been a hell of a rush, and there was something comforting about the steady knowledge that he was _worthy_ of that kind of power, that Mjolnir only let him wield it because it deemed him so—then set off in search of Jane Foster. Which was when he ran into some trouble.

He almost made it: he’d just returned the Power Stone in its Aether form back into Dr. Foster, and was about to key in his next destination when a woman’s quiet voice made him jump and whirl around.

“Well, Asgard is getting all manner of interesting visitors today, I see,” she said.

She was a beautiful Asgardian woman with kind but keen eyes, her honey-colored hair braided into an elaborate almost-crown. Thor’s mother Frigga, maybe? Thor had mentioned speaking to her, during his own trip to the past. 

“Ma’am,” he said. “I’m just—returning something. Sorry for the intrusion. I’ll be on my way now.”

She smiled, and while her smile had Thor’s warmth in it, there was something like Loki’s sharp cunning alight in her eyes.

“To return the rest of the Infinity Stones to their proper time and place?” Steve swallowed hard and didn’t answer. “My dear Captain, it is very obvious to any with eyes to see that you are carrying objects of immense power,” she said, still smiling. “Think carefully before you use any of them.”

“I’m only returning them, ma’am,” he said, and she raised an eyebrow. “I’m not—I don’t intend to do anything bad. I just have to try to get my friend back. She sacrificed herself so we could get the Soul Stone, and everyone else came back, but not her. It’s not right, it’s not fair. She helped save the universe, she should—”

Frigga shook her head. “The Stones do not concern themselves with fairness. Like gravity, they simply are. And the Soul Stone especially is not to be trifled with.”

“What does that mean?”

“That should the Soul Stone offer you a way to get what you desire, you must be careful of what it will demand in return. Because it will not demand something so straightforward as a fight, Captain, and the games it plays aren’t concerned with fairness.”

“Will it demand a quest or something, or another sacrifice?”

“Perhaps. Or some manner of trial. I speak not out of foresight, but simply...there are tales, Captain. And nearly all of them end in sorrow, even when they’re love stories.”

 _Nearly_ all wasn’t _all_. 

“I—I think I understand, ma’am,” he said, though he wasn’t sure where love stories came into it. “Thank you.”

* * *

Returning the Time Stone was next, and here too, Steve couldn’t just return the Stone and leave, because the Ancient One was waiting for him, serene despite the destruction of the Chitauri invasion still raging nearby.

“Ma’am,” he said, greeting her with a respectful nod. “Thank you for letting us borrow the Time Stone.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, and took the Time Stone back from him, tucking it away in some kind of amulet.

Just the Soul Stone left to return now. Steve began to key in the coordinates for Vormir, when the Ancient One lifted a hand to stop him, her eyes narrowing.

“Captain Rogers, what you’re thinking of doing—the Soul Stone is not to be trifled with. It is fickle, and it is beyond human comprehension. To use it is to risk losing things you cannot even fathom.” How the hell did everyone _know_ what Steve was planning to do? Either the Ancient One could read his mind or the frustrated question was just that obvious on his face, because she continued, “It doesn’t take a Sorcerer Supreme to guess why you have left the Soul Stone for last, Captain Rogers. Only consider: there is a reason it of all the Stones has been so rarely sought or used.”

“Thanos used it. Tony and Bruce used it.”

“They used its power. They did not use the Soul Stone itself, they did not manipulate the forces the Soul Stone has power over. Of all the Stones, the Soul Stone’s dominion is...” She paused, seeming to consider, or to search for a word. “Unknowable. Unpredictable. It has some will of its own. Have a care, Captain. To undo a sacrifice is ill-advised, and to bargain with the Soul Stone is to risk losing everything.”

“I’ll take that under advisement, ma’am,” he told her, but judging by the twist of her lips, she knew what he still intended to do. Or at least, what he intended to try.

* * *

Three warnings about the Soul Stone and its dangers weren’t enough to sway Steve from his plan to get Natasha back. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Thor or Thor’s mother or the Ancient One, because he did. It was just that when he weighed those warnings against Natasha’s life, it wasn’t even close. Natasha had kept looking for a way to help, to fix things, even after their most crushing defeat. When everything had seemed hopeless, when they’d all thought there could be no recovery much less any kind of victory, Natasha had clawed hope out of the frozen ground of their grief and guilt, and she’d nurtured that hope and grown it like it was a seed she was bringing to full flower. And to Steve’s shame, she’d done a lot of that without him. Because Steve had been too busy trying to move on, and he hadn’t been brave enough for hope. But Natasha had been.

Steve needed to be brave enough to hope now. He needed to believe that he could get Natasha back. Whatever the Soul Stone could do, whatever it would demand of him, it was worth the risk. Natasha deserved that. It was the absolute least she deserved.

But Steve couldn’t stop thinking about Bucky, about that _I’m gonna miss you_. The doubts and worries raised by Bucky’s reaction to Steve leaving still simmered in him, a slow burn of disquiet. Bucky had known something, Steve was sure of it, Bucky didn’t think Steve would be back in five seconds. And yet he’d still let Steve go. Why?

 _Fucking time travel_ , Steve thought. Would his next choice justify Bucky’s reaction, or erase it as if it had never been? Was Steve about to create a new timeline, destroy his timeline, or preserve it? Steve couldn’t be sure. All he knew was that he couldn’t leave Sam and Bucky on their own in the future not knowing what Steve was doing, if Steve didn’t return in time. Steve couldn’t let them think he’d been lost in time, or that he’d failed to return the Infinity Stones, couldn’t take the risk that they would try to find him.

So before going to Vormir, Steve programmed the quantum wristband for a detour. He had enough Pym particles for a couple of extra trips, according to Bruce, and he used one of those trips now.

He picked his destination carefully: a time when he could be sure he wouldn’t run into any other Avenger—early morning, a few days before Thanos’ genocide—and a location he could be reasonably certain Sam and Bucky, or at least one of the other Avengers, would eventually end up in—Natasha’s Brooklyn safe house.

In this moment of time, Natasha was still alive, so it was purely Steve’s morbid imagination that made the safe house feel like it was haunted with the ghost of her. As he walked through the halls, Steve realized that if the house was haunted by anything, it was haunted by Natasha’s wildest hopes, her most wistful dreams. Because it wasn’t a safe house or bolt hole, one of those familiar and interchangeable places filled only with the necessities and as liminal as a hotel room. No, this brownstone was something else: the possibility of home, a place where Natasha could build a life and a family. Steve could feel it, could see it in the careful and eclectic choice of furniture, in the paint on the walls and the signs of planned renovations.

With each room of the brownstone Steve explored, he realized: this was meant to be _their_ home. Natasha’s and his and Sam’s and Bucky’s. Four bedrooms, enough space for all of them, a little yard that could become a garden—Bucky would like that—and a family room that could house the kind of cozy, huge couch that Sam always loved to sink into with an appreciative groan, and up on the attic that made up the third floor, a wide room whose dusty and cobwebbed walls were mostly windows, big enough to serve as another bedroom—for Wanda, when she visited, maybe—and where Steve just knew the light would be perfect, good enough that he could set up an easel and spend half the day painting.

This wasn’t a safe house, and it never had been.

Natasha had mentioned it sometimes, when they were on the run, staying in abandoned buildings or sleeping in the quinjet or camping: _would you want to go back to Brooklyn, when this is all over and we’re not fugitives any more?_ He’d put her off with his usual quip about not being able to afford it, and she’d smiled, a twist to her lips that was simultaneously sincere and wry. _We could all be roomies_ , she’d said. _It’ll be a regular sitcom._

_A sitcom, huh? What would it be called?_

_I don’t know, the Brooklyn Codgers?_ She’d waggled her eyebrows. _Get it? Because you and Barnes—_

Because of course she’d made room for Bucky in her dream, in her home, despite not knowing him all that well, because Bucky was Steve’s family, and Steve was hers.

Steve wanted to fall to his knees and scream at the unfairness of it all. He wanted to double over and weep, howl with grief and fury, until the neighbors started to think this place was haunted. He wanted to use the Soul Stone right here, right now, and demand it give Natasha back. He wanted to go to the Natasha who was alive in this time and warn her about what was coming, wanted to beg her to make a different choice, when the time came.

Steve didn’t do any of that though. He just took deep, shuddering breaths until the urge to scream and cry passed, until he got a hold of himself. He had work to do, if this was going to be the home Natasha wanted it to be.

He set out into Brooklyn, and acquired the supplies he needed: an old video camera and a blank tape from a dusty and maybe abandoned junk store, then a TV and VCR. He carted it all into the family room of Natasha’s waiting, unrealized dream, set up the camera on a tripod improvised out of cans of paint, and recorded a message.

“Hey. So, if I’ve done this right, I’m hoping Bucky and Sam are the ones watching this, and I hope you’re watching this in Natasha’s house. If you’re not James Buchanan Barnes or Sam Wilson, please either get this tape to them, or leave it where you found it.” Steve paused for a moment to take in a deep breath, then he smiled softly into the camera, imagining he was looking right at Bucky and Sam. “Hey Buck, hey Sam. Hope you two are doing alright and looking out for each other. I’m sorry I can’t be there with both of you right now.” Whenever now was for them. Hopefully not long after Steve left with the Stones. “You got no idea how much I’ve missed both of you, the last five years. But I’ve got something to do before I can come back home, and I’m not willing to risk either of you.”

Steve paused again, finding his firmest resolve, his most steadfast, wild hope.

“I’m getting Natasha back. Whatever it takes. I’m still gonna return the Infinity Stones, don’t worry. And, hopefully, I’m not gonna fuck up our timeline while I do it. But I’ve got a plan to save Natasha, and I—when I have, when I find her, we’re gonna come home. I promise. Keep a light on for us, alright?” he finished, and turned the camera off.

 _Plan_ was a generous word for what Steve had right now. But he’d been here before, kind of. After Phillips had told him that Bucky was MIA, presumed KIA, Steve had refused to accept it, had gone after Bucky with little more than stubborn denial and the desperate need to find Bucky. And he had found Bucky, he’d saved him. For a little while, anyway.

Steve could admit that this was a pretty different situation. This was no fight or battle, no simple extraction. This was undoing death, probably.

Well, why not. Even death was impermanent, Steve had learned, and miracles could be clawed out of the universe’s greedy grasp, if only you fought and hoped tenaciously enough. Natasha had proved that, once. Steve would prove it for her all over again.

 _Just let me win this one last fight, let me have this final miracle_ , thought Steve. _I won’t ask for anything more._


	2. Chapter 2

The quantum wristband coordinates dropped Steve near the top of the climb leading to the Soul Stone. Clint had told him what to expect: the bleakness of Vormir, the Soul Stone’s ghostly guardian, the drop off the cliff. Where Natasha still was, where, if his timing was right, she’d only just fallen—

The thought was unbearable. To see her like that, to have the terrible finality of her death rendered undeniably real…he couldn’t. He just couldn’t accept that. He had to fix this.

Steve climbed up what passed for a path up the mountain. The icy wind battered at him and howled at him, as if it was the furious breath of a beast the size of the whole planet. Steve just ducked his head down and kept climbing until he reached the top of the mountain.

He had a few seconds to take in the view, which was somehow more terrible than the climb. There was no loveliness on Vormir, nor was there even any awe in the vista of dull gray land and dim orange sky that spread out around him. Vormir was ugly, as if to add insult to grave injury. Bad enough that this planet had taken Natasha, but it had to be hideous too.

Just as Steve was wondering if he should try taking out the Soul Stone to summon the guardian, the ghostly gray figure of the guardian manifested, as if from thin air.

“Will my torment _never end_?!” shouted the guardian, and its voice was oddly familiar.

Steve approached it carefully as it floated closer, and he saw a cadaverous red face, burning eyes— “ _Schmidt_?”

He was no longer quite as red, but that was definitely the Red Skull. _What the hell_.

“I was once Johann Schmidt, yes. Now I am a cursed ghost whose hell yields fresh horrors every decade, apparently. What are you doing here, Captain Rogers?”

“What am _I_ doing here, what are _you_ doing here?”

“Did you never wonder where the Tesseract would spit me back out?” sneered Schmidt.

Steve blinked, and cast his memory back to that last fight on the Valkyrie. “Not really. It looked like, you know, the void of space.”

“Well I ended up here!” said Schmidt, gesturing at their surroundings with one disgusted sweep of his skeletal arm. “I thought I was lucky, I thought that I could obtain the Soul Stone, but I had no sacrifice to make, and I displeased it. And thus was I cursed to remain its guardian. I cannot truly die until someone else takes the damn thing.”

“Wow, too bad,” said Steve insincerely. “I’m here to return it.”

Schmidt sighed. “Of course you are. Hand it over, then.”

Steve narrowed his eyes, wary. He wasn’t sure how this curse worked. Would Schmidt be able to use the Stone if Steve gave it to him? He was its guardian, so maybe that meant he only had custody of it, not that he could use it…

“I need to return it,” said Steve slowly, “But…I wanted to use it first.”

“Use it for what?” asked Schmidt, his glower turning suspicious.

“You were here earlier, right? When the Stone was taken?” Steve asked.

“Yes…” Schmidt drifted closer, and Steve tensed.

He’d fight Schmidt if he had to, though to be honest, Steve had no idea how to fight a seemingly incorporeal ghost. He wished fleetingly for Mjolnir, then quashed the thought.

“So you saw. You saw Natasha sacrifice herself.”

“Yes. The Soul Stone demands the sacrifice of someone beloved by the person seeking it, in order to manifest here at all. It…does not react well when that sacrifice is not provided,” said Schmidt with a ghastly grimace.

“I want to bring her back.”

“That’s not how sacrifices work, Rogers,” said Schmidt, annoyed now. “There are no, what do you Americans say, take backs.”

“I’m not the one who made the sacrifice. So why shouldn’t I be able to get her back?”

Steve didn’t doubt that Bruce and Tony had tried to bring Natasha back, but they’d had a lot to deal with: Bruce had to bring back half of the entire universe, and Tony had focused on destroying Thanos and his armies. Maybe they just hadn’t had time to figure out the right way to bring Natasha back, maybe they’d been overwhelmed by all of the other Infinity Stones. Maybe if Steve used only the Soul Stone, maybe if he found a way to communicate with it, he could get Natasha back. It was worth a shot. Hell, it was the only shot he had, so he was going to take it.

Schmidt snorted. “Feel free to make that argument to the Soul Stone. I’m sure it will go well.”

“I have the Soul Stone, I should be able to use it,” countered Steve.

“Hmm, again, feel free to try. Perhaps one bright spot in my accursed afterlife will be seeing what the Soul Stone does to you. Will it curse you to an endless half-life, I wonder? Will you take my place here, haunting this blasted hellscape? Or will the Stone just kill you? I shall look forward to finding out, Captain Rogers.”

Whatever. It wasn’t like Steve had expected a lot of help from the guardian of the Soul Stone anyway. He grit his teeth and opened the case that held the last Infinity Stone: the Soul Stone, its amber glow the one real spot of vibrant color in all of Vormir’s dark and dull landscape. He lifted it out of the case. He’d touched it before, at Thor’s urging. _So you know what it’s like_ , Thor had said. It had just felt like a heavy gemstone in his hand then, only a hair-raising tingle creeping up his arm and down his spine was proof that it was something more. But at Thor’s direction, he’d been keeping his mind carefully clear then, so as not to use it on accident. Now, he held the Soul Stone with intent, and it pulsed in his hand with a knee-weakening kind of power.

Was it like making a wish, he wondered, or would it simply understand his intent? He hadn’t been able to ask Bruce, not willing to risk making him suspicious.

Steve took a deep breath, and held the Soul Stone tightly. He tried to quiet his thoughts and clear his mind, tried to find some calm focus.

_Hello_ , he thought. _Please return Natalia Alianovna Romanova, who sacrificed herself on Vormir so Clinton Francis Barton could obtain the Soul Stone, back to life, whole and unharmed._

Between one heartbeat and the next, Vormir disappeared, replaced by a blindingly amber landscape. Steve crashed to his knees on the golden, baked earth plain, weighed down by something heavy, as his heart and lungs went haywire in a way he’d almost forgotten they even could.

_You think it’s that simple? I am no genie in a lamp, Steven Grant Rogers._

* * *

“What—what’s happening?” gasped Steve.

The Soul Stone was no longer in his hand, and when he looked down at himself, he was small again, which explained the stuttering and juddering beat of his heart, the wheeze of his lungs. As soon as he noticed those familiar physical ailments though, they disappeared, and he was big again, his muscles aching and burning, his whole body bruised and battered. Small or big, something was weighing him down, something was anchoring his feet to the ground and something else was heavy on his back, curving his spine as surely as his scoliosis had, and there it went, he was small again, and something in his pocket was burning against his thigh, he couldn’t tell if it was hot or cold, but when he tried to pull it out, he found that his hands were bound, roped together with some strange cord of light—

“What a mess you are, Steven Grant Rogers,” said a voice that filled everything. It filled the air and the sky and the ground and all of the empty spaces inside of Steve. “Such a heavy, burdened soul.”

“Who are you, where am I?”

He struggled to stand— _you always get up, Steven_ —fighting against the weight pressing him down, and trying to free his hands from the cord binding them together. With effort, he managed to rise, only to find that his legs were shackled with some kind of chain that didn’t seem to be made of any kind of earthly metal given its odd density and the way it somehow exuded a dark glow. In contrast, the cord binding his wrists was practically weightless, gleaming golden with a light that hurt his eyes if he looked at it too long, and while the cord stretched, it wouldn’t break, and even when it wasn’t tight, he could feel the pulse in his wrist pounding against it.

“I should think it’s obvious,” said that voice again, too big and too loud, somehow omnipresent.

Steve supposed it was obvious. “Is this—am I _inside_ the Soul Stone?”

“Yes.”

“Um, why? And what is all of this? Why am I—what’s happening to me?”

“You asked for the return of Natalia Alianovna Romanova. Normally, I would deny you: she sacrificed herself, freely and for a worthy cause, so that her companion could obtain me. But you…you seem like the stubborn type. And I haven’t given a quest in such a long time,” said the voice of the Soul Stone, with wistful hunger. “So you can have her back, if you can find her.”

Steve looked around, as if Natasha could possibly be hiding somewhere in all this flat, orange-hued nothingness. It was as if he was standing in a vast desert, so flat and featureless that what passed for the sky was barely distinguishable from the ground. He could see no tracks on the ground, no smoke or glints of light on the horizon. How was he supposed to find Natasha in all this emptiness? How could he look for her, tied up and weighed down as he was?

His body shifted again, returning to its pre-serum state, and the cord and chains shifted with him, their bindings failing to loosen as he got smaller. He could maybe shuffle along like this if he had to, so long as he could take off whatever heavy thing was on his back.

“What about all of this? Are you doing this to me?”

“You are doing it to yourself. This is your soul, Steven Grant Rogers. These are your soul’s sorrows and burdens and wounds. I have nothing to do with them.”

Steve reached awkwardly for the weight on his back with his bound hands, and touched a familiar, curved metal edge. He heaved it off his back and held it in front of him. He wasn’t all that surprised when he saw what it was: the Captain America shield. It was no longer broken, as it had been after the final fight with Thanos, nor was it the shield of his memory, its paint faded and a few scorch marks marring its surface. This was the shield as he’d first gotten it from Howard: bright and gleaming, the red, white, and blue paint still bold and new. Steve didn’t remember the shield ever being so damn heavy though. He couldn’t even keep holding it up, and had to let it fall to the ground.

“Just—tell me what’s going on, please.”

“If you seek to use the Soul Stone, to truly use my power, you need to get your own soul in order first.”

“And finding Natasha?”

“She was the sacrifice, was she not? That makes her mine. But I am not without some mercy. If you can find her within me, then you may take her with you, and I will return her to life.”

“Mercy,” repeated Steve faintly. “Right. No tricks? You’ll return her to life, body and soul, alive and well? And I’ll be able to leave too?”

“Of course! You need only find her within my realm. My realm is, I grant you, quite large. I contain multitudes, so to speak. But if you find her, or she finds you, you will both be free to return to the world whole and unharmed.”

It seemed almost too good to be true. But Bruce hadn’t mentioned making any kind of bargain with the Soul Stone, or any of the Infinity Stones, when he’d used them.

“None of the others who used the Soul Stone had to deal with this,” said Steve.

“They had the other Stones. And still, using my power cost them dearly, did it not?”

Steve’s mouth went dry, and he swallowed hard. “And what will this cost me?”

“Nothing so dear as your life, and nothing so cheap as your death,” said the Soul Stone, and somehow, that wasn’t a comfort.

It was more of a riddle, really. This whole thing was like being dumped in the thick of a riddle, and Steve had never been much good at riddles. Give him a game of poker or a chess match any day. Tricks and riddles were more in Natasha’s skillset, and he wondered what she would tell him now. She’d tell him not to trust the Soul Stone, probably.

It wasn’t as if Steve hadn’t been warned about what the Soul Stone might demand of him. He considered carefully: as cryptic as the Soul Stone was, it was answering his questions, and it did respond to direct commands. It was just a matter of asking for the right things.

“If—if all this is my soul,” said Steve, gesturing at the shield and the chains, “then how do I get it ‘in order’ so I can look for Natasha? Tell me what all of this is, what it means.”

A breeze moved the still air around Steve, almost as if the Soul Stone was laughing, and the sensation was eerily like feeling the Soul Stone’s breath, or what passed for it.

“Do you truly not understand your own burdens?” asked the Soul Stone. The object in Steve’s pocket flared even hotter for a moment, and the Soul Stone said, “Take it out.”

The cord binding Steve’s hand stretched enough to let him pull the burning cold object out, and as he did, he saw that the glowing cord was somehow attached to the familiar shape. It was his compass, the needle spinning wildly, and the photo of Peggy inside it was no longer in still black and white, but in moving, living color. The photo was different in other ways too: this wasn’t a photo of Peggy in her SSR uniform, like the photo in the real version of Steve’s compass. Instead, this compass had a photo of Peggy in a wedding dress, smiling, her deep brown eyes sparkling. She looked impossibly luminous and beautiful, like his best and happiest dream made real.

His heart ached just to look at the photo, whether with longing or grief, Steve couldn’t tell. For a long time now, longing and grief were indistinguishable when it came to Peggy. Before he could ask the Soul Stone what it meant, because it wasn’t a photo from her real wedding—Steve had seen those, Peggy had shown them to him—light flared off the shield still on the ground.

“This, I trust, is fairly self-explanatory.”

And okay, yeah, it was. Steve supposed that he could never really be free of Captain America. His body shifted again, the change disconcertingly fast and painless as he flickered between his pre and post-serum selves.

“As is this,” added the Soul Stone.

“Yes,” he told the Soul Stone.

It was almost a comfort, that this pre-serum version of himself still persisted in some way. Steve still dreamed of himself in this body sometimes, missed it even. For all its frailties and weaknesses, this un-enhanced body had carried Steve through a lot. And this body had never been a weapon the way Steve’s body now was. If what was happening to him now was some representation of his soul, then it was only right that he should keep switching between these different versions of himself, both equally true.

And then the heavy and dense chain around his ankles gleamed and clanged, the noise far deeper than should have been possible, deep and resonant enough that it made his bones quiver. Steve could probably manage with his hands bound and the compass burning against him and the shield on his back, but these chains, this weight—Steve could hardly move forward. He wasn’t sure he wanted to acknowledge just what it was that was weighing him down like this, though he suspected he knew. Of course he knew. 

“So much guilt,” said the Soul Stone. “And so much grief.”

“Okay, I get it,” snapped Steve.

“Now, now, don’t get upset. Your soul’s burdens aren’t so terrible. The kind of beings who come to me are often in much worse shape. I curse some of those who seek me for a reason, you know. And those who failed were in much more dire straits than you, such twisted and desperate and greedy souls they were. Why, this should be downright easy for you!”

“But if I try to find Natasha like this…”

“You wouldn’t succeed, no.”

“So how do I fix all of this?”

The hot breeze stirred again, something almost playful and excited in the way it pushed at him. The breeze—the Soul Stone—wrapped a warm and insinuating tendril of air around Steve’s quantum wristband.

“How about we use this and see?” said the Soul Stone, sly and pleased. “Call it a quest.”

Before Steve could ask any more questions or say anything about Pym Particles and coordinates, the tendril of air tightened, a blinding flash of amber light filled Steve’s vision, and the landscape of the Soul Stone disappeared.

* * *

When he opened his eyes, the light was still golden and amber, but now, it was the familiar light of the golden hour on Earth, Earth’s own bright sun gilding the world in loveliness before it put on its daily spectacular show at sunset and disappeared for the night.

Steve looked around, trying to get his bearings: he was on the sidewalk of a quiet residential street in a well-to-do but not rich neighborhood, judging by the neat and verdant lawns and the medium-sized home lots. And if the cars parked in the driveways were any indication, he wasn’t in the 21st century.

He checked the display on his quantum wristband: 1947.

Was this real? Was he really in 1947? Or was this some trick of the Soul Stone’s? Shit, where even _was_ the Soul Stone—

_Don’t worry, I’m here_ , said the Soul Stone, its terrible, too-big voice now no more than a murmur in his mind. _And this is 1947._

“Why—” he started asking, but he had part of his answer when a car pulled into the driveway across the street from him, its door opening to reveal Peggy.

She looked much as she did in his memories from during the war: her carefully curled hair was still a rich brown, no white or gray in it, and as she walked to her front door, she had the same brisk walk that had always made men’s spines straighten as Agent Carter walked past. This was the Peggy Steve could have, should have, gone home to, after the war.

Something burned in his pocket, and he remembered his compass. When he reached into his pocket, it was still there, and when he pulled it out, it wasn’t the version he remembered tucking into his pocket before he left 2024, the _real_ compass. It was the version from within the Soul Stone. It looked much the same, on the outside: a little battered, but the metal still shone. The photo of Peggy inside of it wasn’t the one Steve had put there though: it was the false photo from the Soul Stone, the one of Peggy in a wedding dress, and while the compass needle didn’t spin wildly, it didn’t point true north either. It pointed in the direction of Peggy’s house, then spun and wavered as if confused, before pointing in Peggy’s direction again. He snapped the compass closed before he could see it spin again.

“What am I doing here?” Steve asked the Soul Stone, though he had an inkling of the answer.

_You never let her go. Even after she died, you did not let her go. You just kept looking at that compass, as if it pointed in any direction but the past._

“Just because she’s gone, doesn’t mean I love her any less.”

_You let that love bind you. Not only to her and to your grief, but to inaction, to inertia._

Steve swallowed hard, thinking of that lovely golden cord that had bound his wrists in the Soul Stone, how light it had been, but also how it hadn’t snapped or broken, how it had restricted his hands and wrists.

Peggy was alive here and now, in 1947, but for Steve, she was long dead. She’d lived a long life, and a fulfilling one, he knew that, she’d told him that. Steve’s grief for her was no longer the terrible mortal wound it had once been. It was a familiar and even beloved companion, the pain almost sweet.

But the Stone wasn’t wrong about inertia. He’d gone on a few blind dates—that Natasha had set up for him, he remembered with a fresh and drowning wave of grief, because it was Natasha who had always been so concerned with his happiness, Natasha who had always teased and cajoled and prodded him into living a full life, even when he’d felt stranded in the future—and there’d been the briefest spark with Sharon, though that had fizzled out quickly. He’d made no other attempts at romance, always telling himself, and Natasha, that it wasn’t the right time, that he wasn’t ready, that it was hard to find someone with shared life experiences, and really, he didn’t need any romantic relationship at all.

_Feel free to continue to let it bind you, I suppose. You may manage to find your Natasha without freeing your soul of this burden. Or...you could stay._

“What?” he whispered.

_You could stay here, now. You could have this life you wanted so much._

“But..the timeline....”

_Make a new one. You already did, when you stole the Mind Stone. You could stay here, Steve. You could come home from the war, just as you always should have. You could find Bucky, and save him. You could stop fighting._

Steve let himself imagine it, his best of all possible worlds: being Peggy’s husband, saving Bucky from decades of torture, making a family, burning HYDRA’s new heads before they could spread their rot through SHIELD, living through the 20th century, instead of spending it frozen and asleep…so much would change from the world Steve knew, of course it would, but surely it would all be for the better? He’d lose Natasha, and Sam, and Wanda and all the others, but then he’d already lost them, hadn’t he? And this timeline would catch up to them eventually, Steve wouldn’t lose them for good—

He’d lose the Bucky and Sam and Wanda who were waiting for him in 2024 though, he realized, he’d lose the other Avengers. They would mourn him, they’d wonder what had happened to him. There would be a version of him still stuck in the ice here too, and Steve couldn’t leave him like that, nor could he rescue that other version of himself while taking over his life. And he still wouldn’t have Natasha back.

God, what was he thinking? The whole reason he was even _doing_ this was for Natasha, his Natasha, the one who’d been his friend and partner through the end of their world and beyond it.

The daydream of his best of all possible worlds dissipated and dissolved, like cotton candy in water, just as sweet and just as ephemeral.

Steve was doing this for Natasha, to bring her back to the world she’d saved, to show her that her hope hadn’t been in vain. Steve was doing this because she had never once given up, not on him or on her family or on the world, not even when she’d been given more than enough reason to. Natasha had stuck by him through the Accords and being a fugitive, she’d supported him when he couldn’t bear to keep Avenging. She had given him the gift of her true self. Through it all, she’d been one of the best things about living in the 21st century: her sly humor, her wry kindness, her bravery and her strength, even her damned persistent nosiness.

_I’m not like you, Steve,_ she used to say. _I haven’t got some unshakeable moral compass, I’m just a spy who tries to pick the least worst option to save the most lives._

Steve had always thought that made her braver, in a way. It sure as hell made her stronger. And he knew, if their positions were reversed right now, if it was Natasha who was offered the chance to build her own best possible world out of the tragedy of her past at the cost of Steve’s life in the future, she wouldn’t do it. She’d choose him, she’d choose their future, the one they’d helped make, for good and for ill.

He loved Peggy, he did, and he always would. But she had said it herself: _none of us can go back, darling_. Steve wanted to go forward, for once. He didn’t want to stay mired in grief and endless wars. And he wanted Natasha back.

“No,” Steve told the Soul Stone. “No, I’m not staying.”

_Then say goodbye and let her go._

* * *

So Steve said goodbye to Peggy, and to the impossible dream of living a life with her, one last time.

He went to her door and knocked, and after some fast footwork to avoid her fearsome right hook, and a bit of shouting, he managed to convince Peggy that he was the real Steve Rogers, and she let him in.

“How are you here?” she asked.

Her eyes were wide and glittering with furious and shocked tears, and she was trembling, just a little. Steve supposed there was no avoiding her shock at seeing him return from the supposed dead, but he hated to see her upset all the same.

“It’s a long story,” he told her. “Involving time travel and—” He searched for an explanation that was both true and that wouldn’t make him sound insane, and settled on, “And things like the Tesseract. I can’t tell you much more than that, I’m sorry.”

Peggy’s eyes narrowed, and she clenched her fists. “What, because it’s classified? I swear, Steven Grant Rogers, if you’ve been alive all this time, and this is some covert mission that involved you _faking_ your _death_ —”

With every word, her voice got louder, so Steve rushed to reassure her before she could really go off on a tear.

“No, no, I didn’t fake my death and this isn’t a covert mission. Or, it is, I guess, just—it’s not one I’ve been on since 1943, I swear.”

“Then just what sort of mission is it? And _when_ is it, exactly?”

“I’m from 2024,” he added, and watched that knowledge hit Peggy like a blow. “I can’t tell you anything more because the stability of the timeline depends on it,” he added, somewhat desperately now.

All his wistful, romantic notions of one last dance and kiss were swiftly crumbling under the onslaught of Peggy’s interrogation, and her shock. Really, he should’ve expected this, and yet he still found himself wishing the Soul Stone had picked a better time for this goodbye, not that Steve knew if there even was a better time.

“And this involves the Tesseract,” said Peggy. Her shock was giving way to her keen and fast intellect, and Steve could practically see the possibilities flitting across her mind.

“Something like the Tesseract, yeah,” confirmed Steve.

“But how did you end up in the frankly impossible sounding year of 2024, looking scarcely any older?” she demanded.

_Careful now,_ whispered the Soul Stone. _Reveal too much and you compromise your timeline, and I’m afraid that counts as a definite forfeit in this little quest of ours._

“I can’t tell you that, I’m sorry.”

“You survived crashing a bloody plane into the Arctic and you can’t tell me _how_?” asked Peggy, her voice rising in frustration. Steve just looked at her, steady and pleading.

“No, I can’t. I can’t risk changing the events that led to me even coming here in the first place, it could cause a paradox. Just—Peg, there’s nothing you can do, nothing you should do.”

“Well that sounds like utter nonsense,” Peggy said, still looking just a little wild around the eyes. But her shoulders released some of their tension, and she led him into the house and sat on the living room sofa, so he knew she was coming around. “Time travel, you said?”

“Yeah,” he said, and sat slowly on the opposite end of the sofa, careful not to crowd Peggy.

“I’m guessing you’re not here to tell me which horses are going to win at the races. Or even any useful intelligence.”

“No, I—I want to, god, I want to, so bad, but we can’t change things, Peggy. If we do, the whole universe could be in danger.”

“Alright,” said Peggy slowly, studying him as if she could figure out every terrible thing to come just by looking at him. “If you can’t change anything, if you can’t stay, then why are you here at all?”

Steve smiled at her, shooting for confident and charming but probably landing somewhere closer to shaky. He was beginning to suspect that this last chance to see Peggy was more cruel than kind, to the both of them. Too late to turn back now though.

“I owe you a dance, don’t I?”

Peggy laughed, and a few tears spilled from her eyes onto her cheeks. She dashed them away impatiently, still watching him closely.

“You can’t tell me you’re breaking the laws of physics and endangering the universe just to have one dance with me,” she said. “We’re neither of us good enough dancers for that. Why are you really here, Steve?”

“To say goodbye,” he admitted, and now his own eyes filled with tears that spilled over. “Selfish, I know, but it’s not every day a guy gets to travel through time. I—I saw I had a chance to see you again, so I took it. Shoulda thought it through a little better, I guess, I just—missed you. I’ve really missed you, Peggy.”

The last of Peggy’s keen sharpness melted from her expression, leaving only bittersweet affection behind. She moved close to him on the sofa and cupped his cheek with her warm hand.

“Oh darling. I’ve missed you too, so much. But I know you: if you’re doing this one selfish thing, it’s in service of something much more heroic,” she said, and Steve shook his head, but Peggy dismissed his denial. “It is, isn’t it. Come here.”

He leaned into her arms and took the comfort she offered with almost greedy desperation. It had been so long, since he’d last held her. He’d needed to be so careful with her, in the 21st century, she’d been so frail. Here and now though, she held him with a fierce strength that he returned, and when she kissed him, for the first time in an impossibly long time there was no goodbye in it, no wistful knowledge of an approaching end. This was a kiss for an endless and perfect now, full of nothing but passion, raw and immediate, like this really was his welcome-home kiss.

If she asked him to stay, if she said _damn the timeline, we’ll figure it out_ , Steve wasn’t sure he had it in him to say no to her.

When she pulled away, her eyes still closed, Steve took a moment to just look at her: at the tracks of tears on her cheeks and her smudged lipstick, and at the expression on her face that wavered between peace and wistful longing, so at odds with the fervent passion of her lips. And he knew: she wasn’t going to ask him to stay.

She opened her eyes and asked him, “Are you happy?”

“When I’m kissing you? Always.”

“Lord, where did you learn such terrible smooth talk from. Be serious, Steve. I mean, are you happy, in the future?”

“Not yet,” he said, then thought of Natasha, her glowing and hopeful smile before she’d gone to Vormir, thought of Sam and Bucky, thought of all of them together in that brownstone in Brooklyn. “But I could be. I _will_ be,” he continued, as reckless in hope as he’d once been in back alley fights.

“And I will be too, I’m guessing,” said Peggy, her gaze steady and searching. “Otherwise you’d be here for more than just a dance.”

Steve nodded, relieved at how much she understood without him having to say more. He kissed her again, and this time, their kiss was slow and gentle, the way they’d never really had a chance to be in all their rushed liaisons during the war. Peggy took her time with him, and the moment stretched and softened, easing some of the bitter sorrow of the goodbye to come even as he tasted the salt of both of their tears on Peggy’s lips. She kissed him and kissed him, tender and without desperation, and Steve knew.

“You’ve already let me go, haven’t you,” he said when Peggy pulled away, and she smiled, grief and love in every line of her face, then opened her shining eyes.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I have. I had to, so I could move on, so I could live the life I have rather than the life I wanted and lost. But I will always love you and miss you, darling. And now—at least I’ll know: somewhere, somewhen, you will be alive and happy.”

“Yeah. It’ll take some time, but yeah. Just—you can’t tell anyone, Peggy. It’s really not hyperbole to say the fate of the universe depends on it.”

“I understand,” she said, then added, “You know, I’m still waiting for that dance. Given the circumstances, I’ll forgive you for it not being the Stork Club.”

So they put a record on, something slow and sweet and a little sad, the kind of song a club would play at the end of the night, a last call for lovers, slow dance of a song, and they shuffled and swayed together in the golden sunset light that filled Peggy’s living room. They held each other, and they danced and swayed and danced again until the record needle came to a hissing stop, and the only music left was the shush and static at the end of the record.

“Thank you,” said Steve, not quite ready to let Peggy go yet.

For a moment, he felt the soft binding of that golden cord around his wrists, and he wanted that cord to bind him and Peggy together, hand in hand, to hell with preserving the timeline. But Peggy had let him go already, and any bond between them now wouldn’t stay soft like this, it would turn tight and punishing when Steve’s selfishness caught up with him. So Steve let her go, one last time.

“Goodbye, Steve,” Peggy said, her voice wavering only a little.

“You’ll see me again,” Steve promised her, and then he left.


	3. Chapter 3

The moment he stepped outside of Peggy’s house, the strange light of the Soul Stone flashed, and he was back in the Stone, where his wrists were bare and unbound, the compass now a steady warmth in his pocket rather than a searing burn. When he pulled it out and opened it, the photo inside was the real one, the one Steve himself had put there, of Peggy in her SSR uniform, in black and white just like always. The compass needle didn’t spin wildly anymore, though it didn’t point north either, not that north meant much of anything in here. Instead the needle pointed southeast, steady and unwavering.

He looked in the direction the needle was pointing, but he didn’t see anything other than the same undifferentiated, flat landscape of amber and gold. He took a few steps forward, as if that would reveal some new landmark in the distance, before he nearly tripped from the weight and bulk of the heavy dark chains encircling his feet. The weight on his back had returned too, heavy enough that it had him leaning forward, bowed nearly double to bear it. He tucked the compass back in his pocket and heaved the too-dense shield off his back, letting it clatter onto the dusty ground.

“I can’t keep carrying it,” Steve said into the silence.

He’d known that for a long time. Every time he’d dropped the shield, he’d thought it would be for good: letting it fall into the Potomac from the helicarrier, desperate to save Bucky, no matter what it took; dropping it after the fight with Tony in Siberia, and lifting Bucky up instead; leaving it to gather dust after the Decimation, because what good was it even doing. And yet, every time he’d thought he was done with the shield, that he was done being Captain America, Steve had been proven wrong. The shield had kept finding its way back into Steve’s hands for one more fight, one more war, like it was Mjolnir, always ready to come when called. 

Steve knew that he couldn’t expect to toss the shield aside and proclaim he was just Steve Rogers now, not Captain America. It wouldn’t work. Part of him had always known that it wouldn’t work. He owed more to the symbols Captain America and this shield had become than to just cast them off. All these years spent being no one other than Steve Rogers had at least helped him realize what parts of him were all him, and what parts were Captain America, but that didn’t mean he could just shed the shield like a shell he’d outgrown. 

“Good, you understand,” said the Soul Stone. “Do you understand how to free yourself of this weight?”

“I need to pass the shield on,” said Steve. “I need to let someone new become Captain America.”

Natasha had suggested it to him, years ago. Jokingly at first, but then with increasing seriousness. _Who says you have to be Captain America forever? Let someone else take on the mantle_. _You died with the shield once, you don’t need to do it again._

“But who will take that burden on?” asked the Soul Stone. “Choose carefully, Captain Rogers. For if your chosen cannot bear the burden of this mantle, it will be yours again, and it will grow heavier still.”

_Great, so no pressure_ , thought Steve.

Pressure or not, there was only one real answer to the question of who should bear the shield now.

“Sam. Samuel Thomas Wilson should be the next Captain America. He’s who I want to pass the shield on to.”

If Steve had been made for the war, a man turned into a weapon, then Sam had made himself into the kind of man who could protect and help people in the unsettled peace that came after the war. The world didn’t need a weapon like Steve any more, it didn’t need the shining and distant beacon of rightness that was Captain America. It didn’t need that figure who was enshrined in the Smithsonian, symbol of a different time, a different war. Captain America couldn’t keep being about looking to the past. Captain America needed to look to the future. The world needed someone new to carry the shield, it needed someone who was always there to help and rescue and protect, not just to fight. And who was better at that than Sam? Sam, with his wings and his steady kindness and his humor, Sam who always put others’ safety and wellbeing first.

Steve had let Cap’s propaganda get bigger than him, the legend and meaning of Cap shifting and growing while he slept in the ice. But Sam, Sam would take hold of the symbol of Captain America and he would tear it down and remake it. He would give a hearty fuck you to the kinds of people who thought Captain America—and America—should always be for people like Steve, rather than for all Americans.

Yeah, Sam was the right man to be Captain America. Steve was sure of it. Whether Steve was giving him a gift or a burden though…Steve supposed that depended partly on Sam. The mantle of Captain America, no matter who held it or if no one held it at all, would make no difference to their friendship; years on the run together had proven that much. But if Sam refused the shield, Steve wouldn’t blame him. Though if Sam did accept the shield and all its burdens, Steve hoped he could ease them for Sam the way he’d eased so many of Steve’s.

_“_ Alright. Let’s see if he will accept it,” said the Soul Stone, and then everything went bright and golden again.

* * *

When Steve’s vision cleared, he was in a too-familiar wooded clearing next to a bench on a lakeshore he’d left not too long ago, and he felt strange. The shield was in his hands, back to its normal weight and impossibly whole and unmarred, and yet his hands ached and trembled to hold it, his elbows and shoulders creakily protesting the strain. When Steve looked at his hands, he realized why: they were gnarled and wrinkled, the hands of a man nearly as old as Steve’s actual hundred plus years, the joints slightly swollen. He set the shield down carefully, leaning it against the bench.

“What did you do?” Steve hissed at the Soul Stone, panic making his heart pound and race in a skipping rhythm. “Why am I old now?!”

_Oops!_ said the Soul Stone, not sounding particularly sorry. Also, the colloquialism sounded downright unsettling in the Stone’s impossibly sonorous mental voice. _Time travel isn’t in my usual metier, you understand, and that little time travel device of yours is so quaint and primitive! It seems I neglected to keep you from aging as we traveled forward again, my apologies._

“Oh yeah? Then why are my clothes different too?” Steve demanded, because he wasn’t in his uniform anymore, and instead he was wearing a nondescript outfit of button-up, jacket, and pants. “And is this shield even real?”

_So many little details to keep track of, be grateful I manifested you with clothes on at all. And yes, the shield is real, you think I can’t manifest a simple disc of vibranium? But no worries, I’ll fix all the rest of it on our next trip!_

“Fix it now!” demanded Steve, because he knew where he was, and as he looked around, he suspected he knew _when_ he was too.

Because that was Bruce over in the clearing, looking about as big and green and nervous as he had when Steve had stepped onto the quantum tunnel platform, and that was Sam still in his suit from the funeral, and there was Bucky too, and _shit shit shit_ , damn Bucky’s keen eyes, he’d already spotted Steve. Steve’s suddenly older eyes couldn’t make out the expression on Bucky’s face from this distance, and Bucky’s body language revealed nothing other than his habitual graceful watchfulness, but Steve could see Bucky gesture Sam over towards the bench.

_Fuck_.

_Now, let’s get some rules straight_ , said the Soul Stone as Sam walked towards Steve. _You cannot reveal anything about your quest, Steven Grant Rogers, or else you will forfeit the whole thing. Samuel Thomas Wilson must take up the shield, of his own free will._

“If I can’t talk about my quest then how the hell am I gonna explain me looking like this? Are you _sabotaging_ me?”

_No I am not, and also, that sounds like a you problem._

It was the kind of thing Natasha would have said, and that flustered him enough to leave him off balance when Sam reached him.

“Hi, Sam,” said Steve, relieved when his voice came out steady.

“So, did something go wrong or did something go right?” asked Sam, taking him in with a shock that didn’t take long to waver between surprise and acceptance.

Shit, Steve didn’t even know how to answer that without giving anything away. It was a damned good thing that Steve had thought to leave that message in Natasha’s brownstone. Whatever happened now, if Steve couldn’t get back to this moment in time or something close to it, at least Sam and Bucky would know what Steve was really up to, without the Soul Stone claiming a forfeit.

“Little of both, I guess,” he said, which was both true and uselessly cryptic. He considered what else he could say that was both true and vague enough that it wouldn’t give him away, and added, “I put the Stones back, and then I...had some other stuff to take care of.”

“How’d that work out for you?” asked Sam, with some caution.

Steve thought of Peggy and their dance, and smiled. “It was beautiful,” he said.

“I’m happy for you. Truly,” said Sam softly, and while his eyes were shiny with tears, there was nothing but sincerity in his voice, even though he had to be feeling pretty damned blindsided right now. God, Sam was a ridiculously good man. “So...what’s next?”

Steve nodded towards the shield, and watched as Sam truly noticed it for the first time, his eyes widening as he took in how it was whole and new.

“Try it on,” Steve said. Sam picked up the shield and set it on his arm, the movement as natural and easy as if he’d been doing it all his life, the weight resting lightly on his strong forearm. “How’s it feel?”

“Like it’s someone else’s,” said Sam, staring at the shield with wonder and not a little anxiety.

“It isn’t,” Steve told him. “It’s yours now, if you’ll have it.”

Sam’s head snapped up, and his mouth dropped open, silent for a few seconds before he croaked out, “What? Steve, I—”

“I can’t think of anyone more worthy of being Cap, Sam. When Erskine gave me the serum, he said he wasn’t looking for a perfect soldier, he was looking for a good man. And I—I’ve tried to live up to that, to be a good man who’s worthy of Erskine’s sacrifice, and of the power the serum’s given me. But when I became Cap, I was always a soldier first, and a soldier’s whole purpose is to fight a war. I think it’s time for Captain America to be something more than a soldier.”

“But—I’m just a soldier too, and I’m not even super-powered—”

“You were pararescue, Sam. You were—you _are_ —the guy who saves people. Who puts on a pair of wings and a jetpack and gets people to safety when it seemed impossible. Was it ever really about the war for you? Did you ever do any of it for the fight?”

Sam shook his head, a short and jerky motion, his eyes returning to the shield gleaming on his arm.

“That’s why you’re the Cap the world needs now. The war’s over, Sam. People need rescue or protection, more than they need someone like me on the front lines. They need to see a Captain America like you. I figure that’ll mean a hell of a lot, to a hell of a lot of people, for a lot of different reasons.”

“Yeah...yeah, it will,” whispered Sam, blinking fast enough that the tears filling his eyes didn’t fall. “But there has to be someone else who can be a better Cap than me.”

“What, you want me to have auditions? Maybe ask for some resumes?” Sam glared at him, and Steve continued, “I could look at thousands of resumes, and I’d still choose you for this, Sam. Because when I was as low as I could get, when I didn’t think there was any way I could live in a world without all of you, when I didn’t know what I could possibly do to help or make a difference, I asked myself: _what would Sam do_. And that’s what I did. So I figure, any guy who Captain America looks up to is the right person to be the next Captain America.”

Sam sucked in a shaky breath, and hid his face behind his trembling hand. Steve put a hand on Sam’s shoulder and waited, until Sam said, “Fuck, Steve...that’s...thank you, man.”

“I trust you with this, Sam. You’re a good man, and you’re one of my best friends, and I love you. I’ve—I’ve missed you so fucking much.”

So much joy had been missing from Steve’s life without Sam. Even on the run, staying in one cramped safe house after another, Sam had made them laugh. And where Steve had felt weighed down by his choices to reject the Accords, to split up the Avengers, to keep Bucky safe in Wakanda, Sam had borne those same heavy choices with a straight back and a light heart, with no regrets, because they were the right thing to do. Steve was so fucking happy to have him back. He wished he could tell Sam, _I’ll be here with you, every step of the way, I’ll have your back like you had mine_.

“Hey, I love you too, Steve,” said Sam, and gave him a careful sideways hug.

“It’s okay, I’m okay,” he said. Shit, Steve had to get a hold of himself, before he gave something away. He fought down his tears and his desperation, willed his voice to stay steady and asked, “So...you willing to take it on?”

Sam looked at him, and Steve did his best to project nothing more than calm certainty that Sam was the right person for this. Steve was certain, of course he was, but Sam couldn’t see that Steve was desperate for this to work, Steve couldn’t let on that there was anything else going on, because if Sam asked questions, Steve didn’t have any answers he could give him without losing the chance to save Natasha.

Natasha would have said this was the right call. She’d said as much, kind of, after the mess with the Accords: _you shouldn’t have given up the shield, Steve, not like that. If you’re going to put the shield down, you need to pass it on too._ She’d been right, of course, but when Steve had asked her who he should have passed the shield on to, she’d just shrugged. _I don’t know. I just know you’re the best person to choose them._

“Yeah,” said Sam after a long, heart-pounding silence. “Yeah, alright. I’ll do it. I’ll be Captain America.”

Steve sighed in relief, and he smiled at Sam. “Thank you, Sam.”

Some disbelieving shock lingered in the tightness around Sam’s eyes, but he didn’t ask any of the questions he surely still had, and instead he tipped his head towards where Bucky was still standing some distance away and said, “Hey, maybe you oughta talk to Bucky.”

_Isn’t this when I should disappear?_ Steve thought at the Soul Stone, with some desperation. He didn’t know what the hell he could say to Bucky without giving anything away, and what would Bucky think—

_Hmm, no, not yet. Your quest isn’t over yet, after all_ , the Soul Stone said, and for a second, Steve felt the weight of the chains on his feet. He stood, half expecting to hear those chains clanking, and walked towards Bucky, dread and panic in every slow step.

* * *

“Hey, Steve,” said Bucky when Steve reached him, his voice soft and low. He smiled at Steve, and there was so much sadness in it, but so much joy too. “Lookin’ good.”

“Bullshit,” Steve said, and Bucky’s smile deepened, making his whole face crease up.

That smile was a rare sight in the 21st century, rare enough that Steve wasn’t yet used to how it looked on Bucky’s face now. Once, a century ago, it had made him look boyish and bright-eyed, a little goofy. Now, with the last lingering baby fat of his youth having disappeared, and with so many years and sorrows to carry, this smile looked different: sweeter and deeper, with a sting of pain to it, because the sadness never fully left Bucky’s eyes anymore.

“Nah, I mean it,” said Bucky, still smiling. “Time was, everyone was telling me I’d never get to see you as an old man. Nice to see them proven wrong. The years look good on you, Steve.”

It was just— _so Bucky._ To offer this impossible grace and generosity, when he should have had nothing but questions, when he had every right to be hurt and angry and confused by Steve showing up looking like he’d taken the opportunity to live out a whole lifetime in some other timeline. Guilt pulled at Steve, so strong that Steve could almost feel it. All Steve had ever done was let Bucky down when it counted, and yet, here Bucky was, still happy for Steve, still accepting Steve exactly as he was.

“I love you,” Steve told him.

It seemed ridiculous that for so many years of their friendship, Steve had never said it. Not like this, anyway: sincerely, to Bucky’s face, without any kind of deflection or joke. What had ever even stopped him? Some stupid, stubborn pride, or some odd kind of shame? As if there was something _wrong_ with admitting out loud what Bucky meant to him, as if Bucky wouldn’t return the sentiment. Now Steve wanted to say it all the time, wanted Bucky to know, to be sure.

Maybe Steve shouldn’t have said it though, because Bucky’s smile faded a little, the first flickers of concern showing in his eyes.

“I know. I love you too,” he said, as easily and sincerely as he’d made his promise to Steve, so many years ago: _I’m with you to the end of the line_. God, and what that promise had cost him. Tears pricked at Steve’s eyes.

“Even now? Even like this? You’re still gonna keep that old promise?”

Bucky’s devotion was a gift Steve had never deserved. Every time Steve thought there would be a limit to it, Bucky proved him wrong, and despite knowing that whatever Bucky thought was going on right now wasn’t the truth, Steve was oddly heartbroken and furious: how could Bucky forgive him even this? For all Bucky knew, Steve had chosen to live a life without him, in some other time, returning only at the end of even his enhanced life span.

Bucky frowned, confusion in the furrow of his brow. “What do you mean? Steve, you’re already back.”

Wait, what? But that didn’t make sense—

_Time to go_ , said the Soul Stone, and its peculiar mental voice sounded almost rushed. Before the light took him, Steve managed to say, “You and Sam look out for each other!” and then he was gone.

* * *

Before Steve could puzzle over Bucky’s words and just what the hell they meant, Steve was back in the Soul Stone, thankfully returned to his familiar, shifting body: no longer elderly, but instead flickering between his pre- and post-serum forms in a way that was almost comforting by now.

To Steve’s relief, the heavy weight of the shield on his back was gone, replaced by something else—something lighter than the unnaturally heavy shield, certainly, with a weight that was distributed differently. When he looked over his shoulder, he didn’t see the shield or even the backpack he expected to see. To Steve’s surprise, he saw wings. Sam’s wings.

Or, not quite Sam’s Falcon wings: these were simpler in design, with an odd melding of organic and mechanical parts. Their frame was much like Sam’s actual wings, slightly too angular and sharp to be natural. The feathers were real though, soft and warm when he brushed his fingers across them, the same rich, dark brown color as an actual falcon’s.

“What—how—”

Even as he said the words, the wings responded to him, unfurling and spreading. Steve could feel the power in them, how they both were and weren’t a part of him. They were kind of like the shield that way; after so long, the shield had sometimes felt like an extension of his body, he’d become so intimately familiar with the way it moved and felt. He gave the wings a few experimental flaps, and laughed in wonder as they moved the air, creating gusts of wind in the otherwise too-still air. He made the wings beat more powerfully, tried to build enough momentum to get off the ground, but he barely managed more than a hop before the chains around his ankles brought him back down to earth.

“So long as your friend bears the shield, these wings will carry you in my realm,” said the Soul Stone. “Or they _would_ carry you, if not for those shackles of yours.”

Steve looked down at the chains and shackles that encircled his ankles. Were they a little smaller and less heavy than they had been? Maybe. Even so, Steve couldn’t hope to move with any kind of speed with them on. Steve could pull a helicopter out of the sky, but the unearthly, impossible density and weight of these chains defeated Steve’s supersoldier strength. Which made sense, he supposed. These chains weren’t real, not in a physical sense, anyway. They were his guilt and his grief, the Soul Stone had said, and looking at the miserable, choking darkness the chains seemed to exude, Steve knew it was true.

“You understand what this is?” asked the Soul Stone.

“Yeah, I get the metaphor, thanks,” Steve said.

Did Natasha have chains like these too, wherever she was inside the Soul Stone? Steve knew she’d still been plagued with guilt for the things she’d done while under the Red Room’s control. He hoped that guilt hadn’t followed her here; he hoped she knew that her ledger was wholly in the black now, no red left, because she’d helped save everyone. Hell, she’d helped save the world more than once. Surely that was enough to free Natasha’s soul of all those burdens she’d taken on. Maybe, if Steve could save her— _when_ Steve saved her—maybe she’d find some peace: peace with herself and with her place in the world.

First though, Steve had to look to his own burdens. So he sat down, and maneuvered his bound legs so that he could get a closer look at the chains. Not only were they heavy, they actively dragged on him, as if something or someone was trying to pull him down. The chains’ dark and dense metal seemed to eat light, and there was no seam on the shackles, no give in the chain. He gave a few links of the chain an experimental tug, trying to break them apart, but he could barely even hold the chain up.

“If you get the metaphor, then why are you trying to break the chain like this? It’s not going to work.”

The Soul Stone sounded downright snippy now. Steve wasn’t sure if he should be alarmed or comforted by how the Soul Stone was sounding more and more human the more time Steve spent with it. When he’d first heard the Stone, it had sounded wholly inhuman, an impersonal voice and a being so immense that it was beyond Steve’s full comprehension. It still sounded incomprehensibly vast, but now it seemed to have more human foibles too, its voice sounding more human and natural, complete with its present exasperation and its earlier, decidedly unwelcome sense of mischief.

“It was worth a shot,” muttered Steve.

“Well stop it. It won’t work. Your physical strength is meaningless against the grief and guilt that imprison you.”

“Grief isn’t a prison,” said Steve. “I can’t—how am I supposed to let go of my grief? I’ve lost people, a lot of people. There’s nothing wrong with mourning them.”

“You think these chains are simply your grief for those you’ve loved and lost? They’re not.” Steve opened his mouth to dispute that, but the Stone continued, “You are right, there’s nothing wrong with mourning, not when its foundation is love. There _is_ something wrong when your grief is poisoned by your guilt, and when you grieve those yet living. You know what these chains are. You felt it, on our last little trip.”

Bucky. He’d felt the pull of this weight when he’d talked to Bucky. “Yeah,” said Steve.

“Really, you have a surfeit of guilt to choose from,” said the Soul Stone, its tone breezy. Some odd tendril of otherness crept into Steve’s mind and lit up a dizzying and fast succession of images and impressions: Tony’s fury and betrayal, Natasha’s weary hope, Sam’s bruised and battered face after Steve had freed him from the Raft, the aftermath of countless battles, the enemy soldiers he’d killed, the bereaved ruin of a post-Thanos world— “But _this_ guilt: this is the oldest and the deepest and the heaviest.”

Bucky then, falling away from him. Bucky now, with the pain and sadness that never wholly left his eyes.

If Steve were honest with himself, the Soul Stone’s words weren’t a surprise. His love for Bucky had always come with a heaping measure of guilt, because he’d never been able to shake the certainty that Bucky deserved better than Steve, that Bucky would have been and would still be better off without him. If Steve had never met Bucky, he’d be dead around two dozen times over. But Bucky? If Bucky had never met Steve, he’d have been happy, probably, he’d have been spared an unimaginable amount of pain: staying in the war, becoming the Winter Soldier, losing his arm, the mess with Tony and Zemo, all of it.

So yeah, Steve felt pretty goddamn guilty when it came to Bucky. His love was greater than his guilt, sure, how could it not be? Loving Bucky was part of the foundation of Steve’s entire life. If Steve’s love for Peggy was a compass pointing him true, then loving Bucky—and being loved by him—was the ground beneath his feet, holding him in a way he knew he took for granted, until the earth shifted and he was left falling. But as big as his love was, it wasn’t enough to wholly overtake the guilt, and Steve had no idea how he could free himself of it.

“You doubt his forgiveness. You doubt his _promises_ ,” said the Soul Stone. It sounded downright disbelieving, and pretty disapproving too.

“What? What do you mean? I don’t—”

“Oh, I know what your quest should require next,” said the Stone, and there was a sinuous, almost sinister tone to its terrible voice now. Steve shuddered, fear settling heavy in his stomach, yet another weight to carry.

“Forgiveness eases guilt, does it not? But I have seen the soul of James Buchanan Barnes, as bound up as it is with yours, and I know: he will give you that freely, scarcely heeding that it has any cost at all. It only matters whether you will accept it or not.”

“I can, I will,” tried Steve, desperate to head off the cruelty he could almost sense the Soul Stone working up to.

“Perhaps,” said the Soul Stone. “That would free you from these chains, certainly.” It paused, as if for dramatic effect. “There is something else you may need too, though, if you wish to win Natalia Alianovna Romanova back to life.”

“What? What else do I need? Tell me, I’ll do whatever it takes—”

“You have a compass, to show you the way to her,” said the Soul Stone, and Steve blinked, surprised.

He took the compass out, and saw that its needle now pointed in a slightly different direction than it had before, moving slightly closer to due east rather than southeast. Was that what the compass was pointing to? To Natasha?

“And you have wings to make the journey with, once you free yourself from these shackles,” added the Soul Stone. “So: what else do you think you need, Steven Grant Rogers?”

“I don’t know,” said Steve carefully, mindful that this could be a trick question. “Do I need a weapon?”

“No,” said the Soul Stone, drawing the word out. “There is nothing within me that you need to fight. And a question for a question is no answer. What else do you think you need?”

If this were any other retrieval mission, Steve would have said he needed supplies: water, food, a first aid kit, that kind of thing. But this wasn’t a physical journey out in the real world, this wasn’t a mission. This was Steve’s soul, and Natasha’s, laid bare inside the Soul Stone. So if Steve set aside the requirements of a physical body, and if he didn’t need to worry about fighting anything or anyone, then what else was necessary for a successful retrieval mission?

_An exit strategy_.

“A way out. Me and Natasha need a way out. So, a map, or—”

The Soul Stone made a surprisingly delicate kind of scoffing noise. “A _map_? Cute. I am bounded yet limitless, I am larger than your puny mortal consciousness can fathom, I am an infinity in crystalline form. There is no map that will avail you here.” The Soul Stone’s voice grew more and more sonorous and unbearable with each word, then abruptly dropped back to something more normal when it said, “You are almost correct though. You need to avoid becoming lost, or you will both lose yourselves to me.”

“What? What do you mean _lose ourselves_?”

“Do you think a curse is the only failure mode, when it comes to using me?” The Soul Stone laughed, a clanging and clashing sound that made Steve flinch and cover his ears. “Oh no, if you forfeit this quest, if you fail, you forfeit your soul. And your Natasha’s soul too.”

Steve had known the stakes of this quest would be high, but being stuck in here forever? Losing his soul? Losing _Natasha’s_ soul? Risking his life was one thing; Steve had been doing that for a long time. Risking his actual soul, his self, and Natasha’s….He hadn’t exactly been prepared for those possibilities, and learning about them now made him go cold with a fear that didn’t ease when he tried to shake it off and push it down. Dread sat heavier and heavier in his stomach, another weight holding him down, leaving him feeling clumsy with fear.

Only nothing had changed, not really. He’d known failure would cost him—would cost Natasha—more than they could afford to lose, so Steve couldn’t fail, that was all. He’d get them both out of here.

_Alright, think, Rogers_. _You don’t need a map, or a way out, you need...a line._ He needed someone to throw him _a line_ , a metaphorical rope to the real world, to his proper time in 2024.

“A line. I need a line out of here, one to the outside world.”

“And what does a line need, to work properly?” said the Soul Stone, as sweet as a teacher coaxing the right answer out of a student.

“An anchor,” said Steve, relieved to have an answer at last.

“Just so. Your anchor will be your beloved Bucky.”

Which, alright, that was good, wasn’t it? Bucky was steadfast and loyal, a survivor down to his bones. Hell, deeper than his bones, even. Bucky had endured the unendurable, and had remade himself, and after all that he was still kind and brave. There was no one steadier. Some of Steve’s fear eased, buoyed by his trust in Bucky.

“Not his mere existence, of course,” added the Soul Stone. “No, your anchor will be his faith in you.”

Steve swallowed hard. The dread and fear returned to his stomach, a leaden lump that pressed and pulled him down as surely as the shackles around his feet.

“Is that all?” he asked. “How are you gonna judge his faith in me?”

“Ask him for a promise, Steve. Ask him to believe that you will always come back to him. If he holds faith, you will have your anchor. If he doesn’t...well, I’ve almost grown fond of you. I wouldn’t mind keeping you.”

Before Steve could argue or bargain, the now familiar golden light flared again, and this time, it was even brighter, almost punishingly bright. When it cleared to reveal a little round cottage tucked safely beside a calm lake and a gently swaying stand of trees, Steve knew exactly where he was: Wakanda, in the little border village where Bucky made his home.


	4. Chapter 4

Steve may have known where he was, but he had no idea _when_. It wasn’t yet noon, judging by the sun in the sky, and he could hear the usual sounds of Bucky’s little farm: the wind through the trees, the content bleating of the goats, the clucking of the chickens, and under it all, if he really strained his ears, Steve could hear Bucky’s absent-minded humming, the proof that Bucky felt safe.

The peaceful beauty of his surroundings made little impact on Steve’s racing mind. Steve’s new objectives seemed simple enough, on the face of them: accept Bucky’s forgiveness, and ask him for a promise.

Bucky had already given Steve his forgiveness once before. After Siberia, in Wakanda, with their brief time together coming to a too-fast end, Steve had choked out, _Buck, I’m so sorry I never went back for you—_ And Bucky, exhausted and in pain, had dredged up an achingly sad smile for him and said, _Steve, don’t. You couldn’t have known. There’s nothing to be sorry for. It wasn’t your fault._ But then Bucky had gone right into cryo, and his forgiveness had felt like little more than Bucky’s best attempt at comforting Steve, the necessity of it just one more way Steve had failed Bucky.

This time, Steve would be more honest, he’d lay it all out to Bucky, spill his guts and hope for Bucky’s forgiveness, and if he got it, he’d actually accept it this time. Steve knew he owed that to Bucky, and to himself, he did, and he knew the Soul Stone was right: Bucky would give Steve that forgiveness with his usual sincere generosity. Steve only needed to finally accept it.

And if Steve could do that, then the only new thing Steve really needed from Bucky was a promise: a promise that Bucky would always believe in Steve coming back to him. It should have been a relief, to have this last thing be so easy. So why did Steve still feel practically sick with dread and guilt?

 _See, I didn’t change your clothes or your age this time_ , said the Soul Stone, sounding distinctly smug despite Steve’s ongoing anguish.

“Great job,” he whispered, without any particular sincerity. “So, how likely am I to create a paradox here and destroy the timeline?”

_I’m offended! You think I would risk a timeline collapse just to sabotage you? No, this is the point in your timeline that I judged least likely to intersect with anyone other than Bucky’s. You will have until nightfall if you wish to avoid any other people. Of course, if you reveal anything about the future or otherwise cause a paradox, your quest is forfeit._

“Oh, of course,” muttered Steve. Bucky’s tuneless humming stopped, and even from nearly a hundred yards away, Steve could practically sense the change in the air that was Bucky going as still and watchful as any lion who’d caught scent of prey. So Steve called out, “Hey Buck, it’s me!”

“Steve?”

It was nothing like the way Bucky had said his name before falling apart into dust right in front of him, but even so, Steve’s heart stuttered in panic, and Steve found himself running towards Bucky’s voice, the frantic pace of his heartbeat only easing when he saw Bucky, alive and well. He was already a little disheveled and sweaty with the day’s work, his hair beginning to escape from its tie in curling little wisps, his work clothes dusty. Steve didn’t care, he swept Bucky into a tight hug anyway.

“Hey, everything okay?” asked Bucky, squeezing Steve carefully with his one arm, as if worried he was injured. “You didn’t tell me you were coming. Are Wilson and Romanoff okay?”

Steve nearly burst into tears right then and there. That would only worry Bucky though, so he swallowed his tears down and nodded against Bucky’s shoulder. “Yeah. Yeah, everyone’s fine. I just—we were in the neighborhood, figured I’d come and see you. Can’t stay long though, sorry.”

“Alright,” said Bucky as he pulled away. He gave Steve a sharp-eyed once-over. “New uniform? Gotta say, Steve, white isn’t a good pick. Is it camo, did you just come from the tundra or the Arctic or something?”

 _Shit_. Shit shit shit, the _uniform_. Steve was still wearing the white and gray quantum suit, and it was 2017, years before Tony would make it.

“Oh, just something I found in the quinjet. Think it was an old prototype,” lied Steve, and Bucky wrinkled his nose, then grinned.

“I still miss the hot pants, is that uniform kicking around in the quinjet too? It’d be better than this.”

And goddammit, for all the lightness of Bucky’s tone, he was still examining the uniform closely, as if judging how safe it kept Steve, and the look was almost familiar because—oh fuck. This was a lot like how Bucky had looked at the uniform before Steve left on this quest. Before he left 2024.

Bucky, Steve realized now, had _recognized_ this uniform, in 2024. Because here and now, in 2017, was when he’d first seen it.

 _Oh dear_ , said the Soul Stone, sounding far more thrilled than alarmed.

“I’m just gonna go change,” said Steve, and beat a hasty retreat.

_Okay, so, this one was my mistake, maybe. But how exciting! Step carefully now, lest you get caught in the knot of a paradox._

Rather than bother to argue or see what disguise the Soul Stone might have in store for him, Steve ducked into Bucky’s cottage and engaged the disguise function of the quantum suit, changing it into civilian clothes, as his mind reeled. It was too little too late, probably, but at least it would keep Bucky from asking more questions that Steve couldn’t answer.

Whatever happened now, it had already happened, was already part of his and Bucky’s timeline: though he likely didn’t know at this moment, Bucky would eventually realize that the Steve he was talking to now had come from the future. Would that make him more or less likely to keep the promise Steve needed him to keep? Steve’s own personal timeline had become so looping and tangled, it was hard to know how other people experienced it, and it was hard to know how long Bucky would need to keep the promise the Soul Stone required.

From Bucky’s perspective in 2024, Steve had already left and returned, then left again. Suddenly, Bucky’s words in 2024 made sickening sense: _What do you mean? Steve, you’re already back._ But Steve still had to find Natasha and get her out. How long would that take? Did it matter, if Steve could return to 2024 minutes after he’d left it? _Could_ Steve return to 2024 minutes after he’d left it the second time?

 _That’s a question you should have asked sooner_ , said the Soul Stone, sly and almost vicious. _You’ve made a veritable knot out of your timeline._

“What,” whispered Steve, going cold all over. Was he going to miss decades again? Would he and Natasha find themselves in a world they no longer recognized, when they returned to Earth? “ _You’re_ the one who’s been dragging me everywhen—”

 _But don’t worry! As I have said, I am not without mercy_ , continued the Soul Stone. _A year and a day is the price you’ll pay in time, should you succeed in finding Natasha. Can your Bucky keep his promise for that long, do you think? Can Sam bear the burden of the shield for that long, without you and Natasha? It’s barely any time at all to me, but then, I’m not mortal._

“Steve? You okay in there? Did you get stuck trying to get out of that terrible uniform?”

“Yeah, no, I’m fine!” Steve called out. “Be out in a sec!”

 _Fuck_. Steve had been warned, Thor and Thor’s mother and the Ancient One had all warned him: the Soul Stone might not play fair, its price would be high. Natasha, Steve thought, would’ve had a plan for this, she would have considered all the contingencies involved in the Soul Stone not playing fair. It was too late for ifs and should haves though. There was no way out but through now. He just had to beat the Soul Stone at its own game.

* * *

Bucky roped him into the last of his day’s farm chores— _this is why you should tell me you’re coming, but since you didn’t, you can just help me with the goats_ —until the heat of midday had them retreating to the shaded lakeshore for a simple lunch of a spicy stew left over from Bucky’s dinner last night, and the morning’s fresh bread. The food was delicious, but Steve could barely stomach it, and Bucky noticed, his attention on Steve keen and concerned. Christ, Steve was fucking this up already.

“Farm life’s agreeing with you, Buck,” Steve said, and Bucky smiled, the new smile of his, the one that Steve was still getting used to that showed the most in the lines around his eyes rather than the curve of his lips.

“Yeah, it’s alright,” he said, his voice soft with something almost like wonder, or maybe just gratitude. “More relaxing than life on the run, anyway. How’s that treating you, by the way?”

“Oh, you know,” said Steve, trying for a breezy smile. “The usual.”

They chatted idly over the meal, Steve doing his best to keep things vague to avoid getting tangled in the knots of his own non-linear timeline. It wasn’t easy. Steve was hyperconscious of the Soul Stone’s dense weight in his pocket, and he constantly worried that he’d let something slip that would cause a paradox or make their timeline split. He didn’t want to lie to Bucky either though, which meant there were awkward gaps in their conversation when Steve went silent for lack of any safe thing to say.

When their meal and their conversation wound down, Bucky regarded Steve with a steady, searching gaze.

“You okay, Steve? You seem kinda…quiet. Upset, maybe.”

“I’m just tired, Buck. I’m fine,” said Steve, then paused. It was now or never, Steve supposed. He didn’t have the luxury of waiting for the right time to bring this up. “Just—I gotta tell you something, I guess.”

“Alright,” said Bucky, frowning now, worry and the beginnings of fear in the deep furrow of his brow.

Steve took a bracing, deep breath, then said, “I need to tell you that I’m sorry.”

“For what?” asked Bucky, his worry shifting to confusion.

“A lotta things, too many—I just, I keep putting you in danger and—”

Bucky sighed, frustrated and fond, and didn’t let Steve continue. “Steve, if this is about Siberia, or the train again, you know I don’t blame you, most of that was out of both of our control—”

 _So forgiving_ , whispered the Soul Stone. _Do you believe him? After so much suffering, do you really believe he doesn’t blame you, at least a little bit?_ Steve ignored it.

“No, or it’s not only about that. I just—I’ve had a lot of time to think lately. And I’ve been thinking that I haven’t always been a good friend to you. I’ve been selfish for—for our whole lives, pretty much, wanting to keep you with me, even when it’s held you back, even when it’s hurt you.”

Bucky’s eyebrows went up. “I know I got brain damage and amnesia, but that’s really not the way I remember things.”

Steve set his jaw and continued, “And during the war, you could’ve gone home, I should’ve sent you home.”

 _But you’re glad you didn’t send him away, aren’t you?_ The Soul Stone’s sinuous mental voice spread a chill through Steve, like frost creeping over his skin and sending its cold deeper. _Because if you’d sent him home then, he would not be here today. You would have lost him decades ago. What’s decades of torture compared to that? Why, you’re even grateful he’s here with you. Even knowing what it cost, even knowing exactly what they did to him, you’re_ ** _grateful_** _. Are you going to ask forgiveness for that?_

The Soul Stone met his reflexive mental denial with a pulse of searing scorn. _Lie to yourself but you cannot lie to me. You were_ ** _grateful_** _, you were_ ** _glad_** _he was returned to you, no matter the cost._

It was as if the intangible chains around Steve’s ankles were growing and climbing up and up, to Steve’s heart, wrapping it up and squeezing it tight and dragging it down. To Steve’s sick horror, the Soul Stone was right. He _had_ been grateful, he was grateful still. He could try to tell himself that he was grateful for Bucky’s strength, for his healing, for the gift of his life and his friendship, but didn’t it all come down to being grateful for the horrific, unimaginable suffering Bucky had been subjected to? Bucky wouldn’t be here now, if not for what HYDRA had done to him. And Steve was _grateful_ for that. Steve had looked at the horrors in the Winter Soldier files, and some small part of him had whispered, _at least he’s here now, at least he’s alive._ Steve was _relieved_ that he wasn’t the only man out of time, trying to make a new life in the 21st century, as if his and Bucky’s situations were at all comparable.

He could never tell Bucky. Never. He could convince himself of Bucky’s forgiveness for all of the rest of it, but that—no.

Except Natasha’s life and soul might depend on Steve telling Bucky.

_You said you’d do anything, didn’t you? I’m not asking for a lot here. No one even has to die!_

“Yeah, no, let me stop you there, apology rejected,” said Bucky, narrowing his eyes. “I’m, you know, working on dealing with my shit and reclaiming my agency, because I’m a person with choices, and I always _chose_ to stick with you.” Bucky swallowed hard then, and looked down at his lap. “Except when I didn’t. And I’m the one who should be sorry for that.”

This just kept getting worse and worse. “What? Buck, no—”

“I ran from you for two years,” insisted Bucky. “I left you on your own, when I knew you were hurting. And I went into cryo, even though I knew you didn’t want me to, even though you begged me to let you find another way. If—if you hate me for all that, if you can’t forgive me and if you don’t want to keep coming to see me, I’ll understand, you don’t owe me—”

Oh Jesus, Steve was entirely fucking this up. The Soul Stone laughed.

_Oh, this is delicious. He’s apologizing for running from you! When it’s being near you that’s hurt him the most. Go on, ask him to forgive you for all that pain._

“Bucky, no!” said Steve, and the anguish in his voice seemed to shock Bucky into silence. “I—of course I don’t hate you, of course I want to see you. You don’t have to be sorry for any of that. I know you were only doing what you had to, to be safe.”

To his shame, he was crying now, and Bucky looked alarmed for a moment before his eyes went soft and he reached for Steve.

“Hey, Steve, c’mon, it’s okay—” he started, but Steve just jerked away from him. Steve didn’t deserve Bucky’s comfort right now, if he ever had.

“I just—I always feel like I’m letting you down, that I’ve failed you every single time that mattered, and I should’ve looked for you, after you fell, I should’ve known, I should’ve kept you safe but I’ve never been able to—”

“Shh, Steve, there is no part of me that is ever gonna blame you for that,” said Bucky, low and solemn, his eyes steady and certain on Steve’s. “I know feeling guilty is like your natural state of being, but don’t carry that weight on my account. Our shit’s heavy enough.”

Steve shook his head, because Bucky didn’t know, how could Steve tell him—

“Hey, look at me,” said Bucky, and brought his hand to Steve’s neck to pull him close. “Steve, please. You need forgiveness from me, you’ve got it. Okay? You hearing me?”

“Yeah,” said Steve through his tears, but god, Bucky didn’t know, he didn’t _know_ about this ugly and sick and selfish thing inside of Steve that was grateful for all of Bucky’s suffering, that only wanted Bucky with him and damn the consequences, god, you’d think Steve would have learned by now, you’d think losing Bucky over and over and over again would’ve taught him that sometimes the cost of keeping him was too high, that it was always Bucky who paid it, always—

Steve’s tears didn’t stop, and now he was sobbing, awful, wracking sobs that hurt his chest, and he tried to pull away from Bucky, tried to stand so he could leave, but fuck, he couldn’t leave yet, he needed to—if he wanted to save Natasha, he had to—

He fell back to his knees on the hard earth, and tried to get a hold of himself. It didn’t really work.

“Steve, hey, what—what’s wrong, what’s going on? You’re starting to scare me, c’mon, talk to me.”

“You can’t forgive me for this,” said Steve. “How could you forgive me for—”

“I put the blame where it belongs! Steve, you didn’t make HYDRA hurt me, they would’ve done that no matter what—”

_Tell him, Steve. Tell him or your quest is forfeit._

“I’m glad! That’s what’s wrong! I’m _glad_ HYDRA had you, I’m glad they made you the Winter Soldier, because it means you’re here now, it means I haven’t lost you!”

Bucky’s eyes went wide and shocked, and then his entire body went terribly still as he listened to Steve babble out his shame and his guilt.

“I told you, I’m _selfish_ , when it comes to you. I’m so fucking selfish, to want you here with me no matter what it costs. You can’t forgive me for that. How could you—I need to go, Bucky, I’m so sorry—”

He stumbled back to his feet, ready to go, to find some other way to deal with the Soul Stone’s quest, when Bucky spoke.

“Steve,” he said, and his voice was so impossibly steady. And then, still calm, “You are such a fucking idiot.”

“I—what?”

“If you think that’s bad, how about this? I’m grateful too. I’m grateful I’m alive, and HYDRA’s the only reason I’m alive, so that means I’m grateful for what they did to me, right? All those people I killed, and I’m still grateful. Makes me a goddamn monster, right?”

“What, no, Buck, of course not, you’re—” Bucky raised his eyebrows, his expression even. “That’s not—it’s different,” finished Steve.

“I don’t think it is, pal,” he said, and before Steve could object, he continued, “Listen, I’ve had this screaming, crying breakdown, alright? I’m over it. We’re alive, Steve. We can be grateful for that without thinking we’re terrible people, or that we deserved all the shit we’ve been through to get here.”

Natasha had said something similar once, after Thanos. A couple years after the Decimation, they’d taken a day off together. _You need a break_ , Steve had told her, and nagged and cajoled her into hopping onto the back of his motorcycle for a long ride out into the country, until they’d reached a field overgrown with wildflowers. They’d had a picnic together there, where the silence was peaceful rather than a reminder of loss, and Steve had sketched while Natasha read a book, and they’d stayed out in the early summer sunshine until they were pink and sunburned, only riding back at sunset. Then they’d made dinner together back at the compound, and it had been almost normal: talking and laughing over their terrible cooking, Natasha trying to get him to dance along with the music she’d put on. Steve had thought: _what a good day_ and _I think I’m happy,_ only for it all to come crashing down around him when he’d remembered everything they’d lost.

_How can we live, how can we be happy, after everything that’s happened?_

_Because we survived, Steve. We survived. And there’s no use feeling guilty over it. We live, and we try to fix what we can, try to balance our ledgers. It doesn’t do anyone any good if we’re miserable while we do it. So we find what happiness we can, because that’s part of the fight too._

“That’s it,” said Steve faintly. “You’re just—over it.”

Bucky stood and clapped a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “I mean, that took months’ worth of therapy, but yeah, sure.” Bucky eyed him with a mix of suspicion and concern. “Seems like you could use some of that too.”

“Not really the best time for it, what with how I’m a fugitive and all,” said Steve, and Bucky hummed dubiously. Bucky wasn’t wrong though, so Steve added, “When things have settled down some, I’ll—I’ll talk to someone, alright?”

Only then did the last of Bucky’s taut, too-still tension drain away. He smiled at Steve, and it wasn’t the broad and dimpled smile of their youth, no, but the new crinkly-eyed one, focused and sweet, the one that Steve was coming to know and love.

“Good. And...if you need to hear me say it to help you forgive yourself, then I forgive you, Steve.”

Steve closed his eyes, and tried to let the words sink in, tried to imagine the Soul Stone’s chains falling away. The Soul Stone stayed silent, except for one pulse of grudging congratulations.

“Thanks, Buck,” he said.

“Now c’mon, I know what’ll cheer you up,” Bucky said, and took Steve’s hand, like they were kids again and Bucky was about to drag him off to some fresh mischief.

“What’s that?”

“Baby goats, of course.”

* * *

Bucky took him over to the goat pen, where a half dozen or so adult goats were placidly grazing, and three or four baby goats were playing in the grass, bleating at each other and their mothers. They were very small and very fuzzy, and even their plaintive bleating was sweet, so much so that Steve felt a smile grow on his lips almost despite himself. The baby goats really were very cute. The moment they noticed Bucky, a couple of the goats hurried over towards him, and he kneeled to greet them with a smile.

“Hey, little guys,” he said to them, sweet and soft, then looked up at Steve. “C’mon, get over here, Steve.”

When Steve joined Bucky near the baby goats, Bucky lifted one of them up and plopped it into Steve’s arms, and just when Steve got a grip on it, Bucky deposited another baby goat in Steve’s arms too.

“Buck, what—”

“They like being hugged. And I figure it’s basically impossible to stay all sad and guilty when you’ve got an armful of baby goats.”

Steve rolled his eyes, and tried to juggle the goats so he had a firmer grip on them as they bleated and butted gently at his chest and shoulders with their fuzzy little horns. The baby goats were warm and light in his arms, and their earthy scent of sweet hay and sun-warmed fur and their mother’s milk grounded Steve in the reality of the moment. He rocked and swayed with them a little, as if they were actual human kids, and Bucky grinned.

“See? What’d I say. Automatic mood boost.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Steve, but he was smiling too now.

 _Oh, what an excellent use of your time,_ sniped the Soul Stone. _I’ve only given you a momentous quest to return your beloved from death, yet here you are, cuddling livestock._

Well now Steve was gonna cuddle the shit out of these baby goats just to spite the Soul Stone. The need to extract a promise from Bucky was at the forefront of his mind though, so once he and Bucky had provided the goats with sufficient hugs and left them in their mothers’ care, Steve asked Bucky to take a walk with him.

“You sure you can’t stay longer?” asked Bucky. “You seem like you need a break, Steve.”

Fuck, Bucky was really worried. “I know,” he said, and winced when his voice broke on the words. “Just—not yet.”

The walked in silence for a long time, Steve’s words heavy between them, until Bucky stopped walking, and put a careful hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Are you ever—are you ever going to stop, Steve? Stop fighting, I mean.”

 _Even when I do, the war finds me again_ , Steve wanted to tell him, but the Soul Stone butted in. _Careful, Steven_.

So instead he said, “I want to, eventually.”

Bucky frowned, only it wasn’t his _I’m mad at you_ scowl, or his thoughtful frown, or his _you’re being an idiot_ glower; it was his _I’m actually upset_ frown, complete with big sad eyes, and without fail, Steve felt like an absolute monster every time he was the cause of it. Sam and Natasha had always made fun of him for immediately caving whenever Bucky gave him this look, which was easy for them to say, they’d never been on the receiving end of it.

 _He doesn’t believe you,_ murmured the Soul Stone, mockingly sing-song. _Will he ever? You never stay, not even when he needs you the most_. _There is always another battle to be fought_.

Steve understood, then, what he needed to do.

He looked Bucky in the eye, steady and serious, and said, “I’m going to retire, sometime soon.”

Well, soon from Steve’s perspective, hopefully. Steve was stretching the truth somewhat, if you looked at it from Bucky’s more fixed point on the odd and looping timeline of Steve’s life. But Bucky’s life, Steve realized, had run parallel to Steve’s through childhood’s innocence and war and ice and beyond death, Bucky was the anchor Steve could hold to through all these looping and twisting trips through time, and the very least Steve owed him was this promise in return.

“I promise you, I’m gonna give up the shield, I’ll stop fighting.”

Bucky attempted a grin, and it came out wan and worried. There was hope in Bucky’s eyes too though, an achingly bright spark of it that had Steve wondering just how long Bucky had wanted to hear Steve make this promise.

“Steve Rogers, give up fighting? Don’t promise me the impossible, pal.”

“Bucky, I’m serious: no more superheroing. I’m gonna retire, for real. I promise you.”

He willed Bucky to believe him, but Bucky’s expression went carefully inscrutable as he nodded. _Oh, he wants to believe you, but he doesn’t,_ crooned the Soul Stone. _And why should he? You always return to him, dragging the war behind you._

“Alright,” Bucky said quietly.

“Can I—can I ask you for a promise too?”

Bucky bit his lower lip and nodded. “Sure. Whatever you need, Steve.”

_He says that now. But can he keep the promise you need him to keep? After all, you didn’t come back for him when it mattered the most._

Steve ignored the Soul Stone’s insinuations, and focused on Bucky.

“You’re my anchor, Buck. All these years, all this time, and you’re the only reason I’m not gonna get lost in all of it,” he said, and Bucky’s brow furrowed. Before Bucky could interrupt him with the questions Steve could practically see were forming in his mind, he said, “Promise me you’ll always believe that I’m gonna come back.”

 _He believed you would come for him at the bottom of that ravine, you know_ , said the Soul Stone, terribly gentle. _And you did not come._

“Steve? Is there—is your next mission really dangerous, or—”

Steve shook his head. “No, no, it’s—everything’s fine, just—promise me, Buck. Please.”

 _Then, when HYDRA found him and cut off what was left of his arm and began their monstrous work, he still believed you would come, that you would find him and save him as you once had before. And you did not come_.

“Yeah, okay,” said Bucky. “I promise. Hey, come here. It’s gonna be okay,” he said, and reached out to Steve to pull him into a hug.

Steve buried his face in the sun-warmed skin of Bucky’s neck and held him tightly. _Bucky is alive_ , he reminded himself. Here and now, and in 2024, Bucky was alive and safe and well, and all those terrible, long stretches of time when Bucky wasn’t any of those things, those times were over. What mattered now was that Bucky was alive.

 _He waited for so long_ , said the Soul Stone. _And still you did not come. Even when he didn’t remember you, he still looked for you, but you didn’t come and you didn’t come and_ —

 _Shut up shut up shut up_ , thought Steve, and trembled in Bucky’s embrace. _He made me a promise, and Bucky always keeps his promises. Always._

_What will he think, when you return then leave again, in 2024? Will he still keep this promise then? For weeks, for months? Will he begin to doubt? Will this be the time his faith finally breaks?_

Despite the warmth of the day and Bucky’s body, Steve began to feel cold. Bucky let him go.

He’d left Bucky a message, before this quest had even started, Steve reminded himself. Surely that would help, surely Bucky would get the message and keep his promise. Still, the chill of doubt didn’t leave him. What if Sam and Bucky never went to Natasha’s brownstone, what if something happened to the message, what if they never saw it at all and thought Steve had abandoned them—

“I have to go,” whispered Steve, and Bucky smiled, a small and wavering smile, but a smile nonetheless.

“Sure,” said Bucky. “Stay safe, Steve. I’ll be here, when you get back.”

* * *

Back inside the Soul Stone, Steve tried to hold onto the memory of Bucky’s warmth rather than the cold doubt and fear seeping through him, but just as he was about to wrap his arms around himself against the wholly metaphorical chill, he found that he was holding something in his clenched fist: a key. The key was golden, glowing gently, and it was an exact replica of the key to his old apartment, the one he’d shared with his mother.

Steve could perfectly imagine Natasha waggling her eyebrows and saying _forgiveness is the key. Get it?_ And yeah, Steve got it. When he looked at the chains around his ankles, he saw that the shackles now had keyholes.

“The symbolism in here is really ham-fisted, you know that?” he said.

“Hmm, that’s not really my fault,” said the Soul Stone. “I work with the symbols you understand.”

“Sure,” Steve muttered, as he knelt and unlocked the shackles. The locks turned smooth and easy, clicking open quietly despite their heavy density, and when Steve stood, it was easy to step away from their weight.

The moment he did, the bundle of shackles and chains transformed into something that looked a lot like a dock tie or a boat tie anchor, made of the same dark vibranium as Bucky’s new prosthetic arm, and seamed with the same bright gold in intricate shifting patterns. An anchor, of course. The Soul Stone’s symbols were only getting more and more literal, it seemed.

“ _You’re_ the one who called him your anchor,” griped the Soul Stone, and alright, that was fair enough.

Steve examined the anchor more closely and saw that there was a thin line or rope of gold light looped around its base, with the rest of the rope leading up to Steve, to somewhere inside his chest, where he felt it as a faint but tangible tug on his heart. He took a few steps away from the anchor, expecting the rope to go taut, but the slack in the line stayed loose.

“So long as your Bucky keeps his promise, you’ll have a line to this anchor, to ensure you won’t become lost in my depths during your search. Unless you have any more soul-burdening problems you wish to address. You seem in good enough shape to me, but if you’re not ready to search for your Natasha…”

“I’m ready,” said Steve. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little late, sorry! Work was pretty brutal last week, and I kept fussing with the last few scenes. I may yet add a coda to this, but it's complete as is.

Steve was as ready for his search for Natasha as he was ever going to be, he figured. He had his compass to guide the way to her, Sam’s wings to take him there, and a line to Bucky’s anchor that would keep him from getting lost. Easy, right? God, Steve really hoped he’d done the hardest parts already, but he wasn’t about to ask the Soul Stone for reassurance on that point. It would probably fuck with him just on principle.

So Steve stayed silent as he checked the compass for a heading and tried out a few flaps of the wings. They worked like something in a dream—not just because their odd melding of mechanical and organic was impossible, but because like a dream, they didn’t feel quite real, they didn’t feel connected to his actual body. They moved and bore him aloft because he wanted them to, not because of any physical motion of any body part he could actually feel. The mismatch made his flight clumsy and wavering at first, then more certain as he got used to the oddness of using the wings.

Steve took a few minutes to have fun with this newfound flying ability; Natasha, he was pretty sure, wouldn’t begrudge him doing some barrel rolls and dives, though she would roll her eyes. And anyway, this counted as necessary practice, Steve was pretty sure. Once his flight was smooth enough, he pumped his wings harder and harder, going up and up and up, hoping for a vantage point high enough to spot a sign of Natasha in all the vastness surrounding him.

He checked the compass again, and looked in the direction it was pointing, but no matter how much he strained his eyes, he couldn’t see anything. There was no telltale dark shadow on the warm amber color of the Soul Stone, no glint of red hair, no flash of light or trail of smoke from a flare or signal. He did a full 360-degree search, just in case, and still, nothing. The sameness of the Soul Stone was unrelenting, unrelieved by any kind of natural topography, and Steve understood now why he needed an anchor. All this vastness, all this blankness, could swallow him up so easily, could blur his edges, letting whatever his soul was made out of leak into the hungry, patient void of the Soul Stone. Steve tugged on the rope of bright light, just to make sure it was still there, and was reassured to feel that twinge of connection to Bucky and the world outside of the Stone.

Natasha was in here without any kind of anchor, Steve realized. How long could she hold out, before fading away? Was that the catch here, that the Soul Stone would let him try to find her, knowing that there was no hope of success?

“Natasha’s actually here, right?” Steve asked. “She’s not—you haven’t let her, I don’t know, fade away?”

“ _Let_ her?” scoffed the Soul Stone. “If her soul fades or doesn’t, it’s her own doing, not mine.”

“But that’s not fair, if the goal of this quest is to get her out, safe and whole, _alive_ —”

“Then you’d better hurry to find her.” In his shock, his wings stopped beating the air and he dropped a dozen feet before he recovered, and the Soul Stone added, “Oh, don’t fuss, she’s just fine now. It’s still up to you to find her in time though. Entropy is the consequence of all existence, even a soul’s existence in the Soul Stone.”

Steve opened his mouth, ready to argue more or demand more answers, but he stopped and stayed silent instead. Neither he nor Natasha had the time for that, apparently. So he just checked his compass again, and flew in the direction the needle was pointing.

The wonder of flight soon wore out its welcome; in the not-quite-real environs of the Soul Stone, where he couldn’t feel any sun, or wind, or hot or cold, where every part of the climate and environment was bland and unremarkable, the act of flying felt a lot like some kind of simulation. It was all too easy to fall into the same kind of dazed, waking doze that came after too many hours driving on a long straight road, and once Steve realized he didn’t even have to keep beating the wings to stay in the air and he could just glide, it got even worse. He found himself startling out of a mindless doze again and again, checking the compass and his surroundings in a panic only to see the same swathe of amber nothingness stretching out around and under him, with no way of knowing how much time had passed, and no sign of Natasha.

 _Remember why you’re here,_ Steve told himself, and wrapped the rope of light that led to his anchor tightly around his wrist, giving it a couple swift yanks. The sharp, burning tug in his chest that followed woke him up some, and he checked the compass and his surroundings again. Still nothing.

Steve was really beginning to wish this whole quest had just involved a fight. Steve was good at fights, he was made for fights. Which was probably exactly why the Soul Stone wasn’t demanding one.

_Suck it up, Rogers, you knew this wouldn’t be easy._

* * *

After what felt like hours, but could have been minutes or days, Steve finally spotted something on the ground below him: a dark spot of mixed colors, stark and almost shocking against the amber uniformity of the Soul Stone.

“Natasha?” Steve called out, already tucking the wings in to maneuver himself into a dive. “Natasha!”

His landing wasn’t pretty—it was downright bruising—but it didn’t matter, because he saw the rich gleam of Natasha’s red hair, spilling onto the ground. She was lying crumpled and prone, and she was still, too still, but that didn’t necessarily mean the worst, surely. Was she okay, was she sleeping—Steve couldn’t tell. He ran towards her as fast as he could with the clumsy bulk of the wings on his back.

“Natasha, it’s me! It’s Steve, are you okay? I’m here to get you out—” He reached her, and touched her shoulder gently. She still didn’t move. “Natasha?”

He turned her carefully, desperate to see her face, but when he did—

“No,” he said. “No! You said she would be fine!”

Natasha looked different than she had in 2024, but then, so did Steve sometimes in here. He’d never seen Natasha with such long hair, for one: a tangle of coiled and tousled blood-red curls that spilled well past her shoulders. This version of the Black Widow jumpsuit was different too, the thinner fabric clinging tightly to the curves of her body, and the boots downright impractical by Natasha’s standards. She wouldn’t wear heels this high on a mission unless she had to, and she’d never wear them with the catsuit, unless the costume was the point. And her face—her face was pale and empty, slack not with sleep, but with absence, with death.

“She is fine,” said the Soul Stone, against all evidence.

“She’s not fine, she’s dead!” shouted Steve, scarcely able to look at her, but unable to look away too. “Or—she’s gone, this is just a—shell.” He touched her carefully, checking for a pulse, just in case. He felt nothing but unnervingly cool skin, smooth like porcelain. “Or—wait, am I—is this how it’s supposed to be? Am I supposed to take her out of here like this?”

“Try it and see,” hummed the Soul Stone.

Steve frowned down at Natasha—or some remnant of her. He gathered up the wild sprawl of her curls and put them in something like order, then he looked at her still and blank face, unmarred by any fine lines, no dark circles under her eyes. She looked like a doll, her skin too perfect to be real, makeup applied with exacting precision to make her eyelashes long and dark, to line her eyes with sharp wingtips, to color her lips with a shade of dark pink balanced perfectly between intimidating and inviting. He looked again at her uniform, so subtly but completely different from any he’d known her to wear.

This was Natasha, maybe, but not any Natasha Steve had known. It was maybe an idea of Natasha, or—not even Natasha, but the Black Widow. What would happen if he took her out of here with him? Would she turn to ash the moment they re-entered the real world? Or would she simply be a blank construct, a body that didn’t contain Natasha’s actual soul? Both options seemed horribly possible.

He checked his compass again, pointing east now. He took a few steps away from the—not body, Steve didn’t want to call it Natasha’s _body_ —shell. The compass wavered, for just a moment, then it pointed away.

“It’s not her,” Steve murmured to himself, then repeated more firmly, “It’s _not her_.”

He took to the skies again, and didn’t look back.

* * *

Steve didn’t know how much later it was when he spotted another blur of dark color in the distance; he had nothing to measure time with in here, could only rely on Sam’s wings still holding him up, Bucky’s anchor still staying steady, and other than that, he let himself drift as his eyes sought any change in the landscape’s sameness. When he could just barely make out a shadowy blur somewhere in the always receding distance, he put on speed and flew towards it rather than letting himself glide slowly.

HIs landing went a little better this time, but again, his calls to Natasha were met with silence.

This time, the form of the Natasha who awaited him was heart-stoppingly familiar: the short waves of her red hair, the utilitarian and close-fitting version of her Black Widow catsuit that she’d worn as a SHIELD agent, SHIELD’s winged logo on the shoulder. He checked for a pulse again, unsurprised when he found none, only porcelain-cool skin. Another doll, eyes closed in a skin-crawling likeness of peaceful sleep.

Steve had seen Natasha playing with a matryoshka doll souvenir in Kamchatka once, her nimble fingers making quick work of disassembling it, before placing all the top halves in a row, hiding the single tiny doll under them and moving them around like a carnival shell game.

“I always wanted one of these, when I was a little girl,” she’d said. “I was convinced there’d be a prize at the center: a ring, or a candy or something.”

“Was there?” Steve had asked, and she’d snorted.

“No. It’s only you Americans who put treats in your toys and toys in your treats. There’s just a useless tiny doll at the center of a matryoshka. Easy to lose,” she’d said, before lifting each half of the nesting doll to reveal empty space, no tiny doll in sight.

“They called us matryoshka sometimes, in the Red Room,” Natasha had murmured, eyes going vague and distant, before she’d stacked the doll back up, almost too fast to follow.

Maybe this thing with these different Natashas was like that, matryoshka dolls: painted, hollow shells that were and weren’t Natasha herself. Whether it was a trick of the Soul Stone, or part of how Natasha experienced the Soul Stone, shedding old versions of herself, Steve didn’t know.

“Not this one either?” asked the Soul Stone, with studied innocence.

“No,” said Steve.

“You’re sure?” pressed the Soul Stone, and Steve hesitated, because what if…

This _was_ a Natasha Steve knew and recognized. It was the Natasha he’d first met, more or less. But, he thought as he looked at the black SHIELD logo on her shoulder, it wasn’t the _truest_ Natasha. After learning SHIELD was rotten to the core, Natasha had shed SHIELD’s hold on her and burned it. This wasn’t Natasha. Natasha was no SHIELD agent, was no longer just Agent Romanoff, and hadn’t been for a long time.

“Yes, I’m sure,” he said, and jumped up into the sky to continue his search again.

* * *

When Steve next saw deviations in the Soul Stone’s sameness, they weren’t the empty matryoshka shells of Natasha’s other selves, they were scattered objects: a discarded pair of disturbingly small handcuffs, as if made for a child’s wrists; a pair of blood-red ballet shoes, the soles scored and worn, the satin ribbons fraying and tattered; a single crimson rose, the flower blooming full and lovely, smelling exactly like the shifting blend of Natasha’s perfumes, while the stem had barbed wire for thorns, dripping blood. They were all symbols Steve couldn’t quite parse, apart from knowing they were Natasha’s. He left them where they lay, wondering how and why Natasha had left them behind.

* * *

The matryoshka version of Natasha Steve found next was terribly, heartbreakingly young. A too-thin teenager, with hungry hollows in her cheeks and her knuckles scraped raw and bleeding, fingernails ragged, no peace on her snow white, sleeping face, her forehead furrowed under the bangs that fell across it. This had to be the Natasha who had come out of the Red Room, desperate and defiant. Steve had never seen photos, and Natasha had never spoken much of it, but he knew.

Steve had the useless urge to rescue her, to gather her up and take her out of here, give her a safer and more peaceful life. Except it was too late for that. Natasha had saved herself, had remade herself out of the ruins of the Red Room, and she had surely left this version of herself behind for a reason. Still, it felt wrong to just leave her here.

So Steve stayed with her a while.

It was stupid, he knew; this was an empty construct, probably nothing more than a symbolic representation of a past Natasha wanted to leave behind, not an actual young woman fresh out of what Natasha had once called _assassin high school_. And yet, when Steve thought of what this Natasha had endured, what she’d escaped, he couldn’t leave her without making at least some attempt at comfort, at care. Steve could use a break anyway. Bucky’s anchor held steady, the line of light unwavering, and Sam’s wings were still light as feathers and going strong. He could spare a few minutes.

“Hey Natalia,” he murmured, because that felt right, that had to be the right name. This wasn’t Natasha, not yet. “I’m Steve. You don’t know me yet, I guess. Not sure how this works, to be honest. Not sure what I’m doing at all. But we’re—” Here, Steve faltered, searching for the appropriate word. Friends? Partners? Teammates? He and Natasha were all of these things and more, but none of them seemed quite right, until he settled on, “Family, I guess. You have a family, in the future. I know—I know you probably feel really alone. You probably feel like you’re always gonna be alone. But I guess—I guess I just want you to know that you won’t be. That you’re gonna have a family who loves you.”

He sniffed and swallowed down tears, then sat with her in silence for a little while longer. Then he bent to kiss her temple, stood, checked his compass, and continued his search again.

* * *

Steve flew for a long time. The landscape’s monotony was unbroken, and time turned meaningless, marked only by whatever uneven intervals Steve chose to check his compass again. Surely Natasha couldn’t have gotten so far, in such a short amount of time. But if time was meaningless here, then Steve supposed distance was too, and for all he knew, Natasha had her own mode of transport in here. So Steve kept flying and kept looking, even trying to call out for her every so often. The vastness of the Soul Stone swallowed up his voice, but still, maybe somewhere, she could hear him.

Once, Sam’s wings on his back grew suddenly heavy, their smooth motion faltering. _Sam_. Was he hurt? Was he having doubts, or second thoughts about being Captain America? Were the shield and all its burdens to heavy for him after all? Steve reduced his altitude, just in case the wings stopped working entirely, or disappeared, and tried not to panic.

“What a shame,” said the Soul Stone with exaggerated sympathy. “Perhaps you will soon lose the use of these helpful wings. Was your choice of a successor truly so poor? Will he cast off the shield you entrusted him with?”

“No,” insisted Steve. “I trust Sam, he can do this.”

Steve was proven right; after a while, the wings returned to something close to their prior weight, beating the air steadily and evenly once again. So Steve returned to his search, and went so far as to sweep low over the ground, straining his eyes for any sign of tracks on the ground or messages left behind. He found nothing though, the slight shifts in the compass needle’s direction the only proof Steve had that Natasha was still out there, still moving.

Some time later, the line tying Steve to Bucky’s anchor began to burn, the comforting awareness of it turning painful with searing heat. The line held: still glowing with a gentle golden light, still loose with enough slack to allow Steve’s movement, while maintaining that little tug against Steve’s heart that reassured him the line went to Bucky and not empty space. But it hurt too now, and Steve had a terrible feeling he knew why.

“Oh, here it is,” hissed the Soul Stone. “Bucky’s faith in you, hurting him again. You know, it is among the most basic responses of a living organism to shy away from pain. Eventually, Bucky’s prodigious survival instincts will kick in. He’ll stop holding to a faith that has only ever burned him.”

“Bucky won’t give up on me,” said Steve.

“Even when he should?” asked the Soul Stone sweetly.

It wasn’t the tug of the line connecting him to Bucky that made his heart clench with pain. “No. Not even then,” he whispered.

Because he knew, he _knew_ that Bucky had to be missing him right now, had to be doubting, and worrying that the worst had happened, had to be blaming himself for letting Steve go alone. And despite all that, Bucky would keep his promise. Bucky would keep his promise if it took Steve years, or even decades to get back. Because that was who Bucky was.

It was on Steve not to let him down, and to find Natasha.

Eventually, the burning sensation faded, the line of light subsiding into its usual comforting presence, if somewhat warmer now. When Steve tugged on the line, he felt the immoveable solidity of Bucky’s faith at the other end, almost, but not quite, as comforting as the feeling of Bucky at his side.

* * *

Steve searched. Steve searched and searched and searched, following the compass needle’s every shift and shiver, and still he didn’t find Natasha.

Instead he found old uniforms: a white catsuit he didn’t recognize; the overpowered Black Widow suit that Natasha had affectionately ragged on because _c’mon Tony, overkill much?_ ; a shapeless rough shift that had to have been a child’s. He found other clothes and things too: stiletto heels and expensive evening gowns, the scattered pieces of a woman’s business formal wardrobe, black fatigues, a summer dress covered in pastel flowers, a slinky black cocktail dress...none of it was _Natasha_. It was all part of Natasha’s vast array of costumes and disguises, the roles she’d put on and cast off. _The truth is a matter of circumstance_ , she’d once said, and all these parts and pieces were just fleeting circumstances. None of them had much to do with Natasha herself.

Steve _knew_ Natasha. Natasha wasn’t any of her uniforms, or any of her costumes. She nearly always chose the image she presented to the world with care, because her appearance was equal parts weapon and disguise to her, but Steve knew who she really was under all of that. She’d let him see it. Inadvertently at first, maybe, pushed to it by an especially dire circumstance. In Sam’s house, in D.C., all those years ago, when they’d been desperate and on the run and watching their lives collapse around them, she’d let him see past all the cool competence and sly playacting at omniscience to see _her_ : human and scared and brave, and asking him to trust her even as she was certain she didn’t deserve it.

He’d trusted her then because it had been the right thing to do, and because he’d believed her. Somewhere along the line, he kept trusting her because…because…well, because he just _did_. Because she’d never let him down, because he knew her, because not trusting Natasha was like not trusting the sun to rise. To do anything else was to expect calamity.

 _Who do you want me to be_ , she’d asked once, and Steve had answered, _how about a friend?_ And for all that neither of them had much practice at it then—Steve had mostly only ever had Bucky, and Natasha’s relationship with Clint was in some nebulous space between partner and mentor and friend and family—they’d managed to figure it out. They’d started by dropping their masks and roles: casting aside Captain America and the Black Widow, and clocking out of being Captain Rogers and Agent Romanoff, to leave just Steve and Natasha.

In between missions, Natasha would doggedly drag him out to some activity she deemed sufficiently friend-like—trying a new restaurant, seeing a movie, exploring whatever city they were in—saying, _this is what friends do, right?_ He’d been kind of annoyed at first, certain that she was patronizing him, that the outings and trips were still about handling Cap, acclimating him to the 21st century. But then he’d realized, most of it had been just as new and exciting for Natasha. Natasha had never been displaced in time like Steve, but she hadn’t exactly had a normal past either, and modern American life had held almost as much novelty for her as it had for Steve, in some ways.

 _C’mon, Steve, I’ve never been on a haunted hayride, let’s go_ , she’d say, or _did you know there are these places you can go to make your own pottery and paint it yourself? You’re good at art, right, let’s try it_ , or _I know the world has ended and all, but we have got to get better at cooking, Steve, I’m sick of peanut butter sandwiches, come watch these YouTube tutorials with me._

Natasha had always done her best to get Steve to live, to really _live_ as Steve Rogers and not just Captain America. She’d been a good friend. That was the Natasha Steve was looking for, he supposed. His friend: brave and funny and fierce and kind, frustrating and nosy, competent and deadly, and always there for him, no matter what side of the law or battle they were on.

So he cast aside the latest proof of Natasha’s presence—a bag full of false passports this time, each with a different country of origin, each photo of Natasha with a different hair color and hair style—and kept searching.

“You’re doing all this for a _friend_?” said the Soul Stone, amused and disbelieving.

“I’d do this for any of my friends,” snapped Steve.

“Hmm, okay,” said the Soul Stone, in deeply dubious tones. Steve clenched his teeth and kept flying. Just when he thought the Stone would shut up, it continued, “It’s just that traditionally, this sort of quest is for one’s beloved.”

“I love her, does it matter how?”

A gust of frustrated wind rattled Steve with enough midair turbulence that he had to drop a few dozen feet of altitude.

“You’d think this would be the easy part,” grumbled the Soul Stone, then asked again, strangely insistent, “You’re certain you love her only as a friend?”

Steve almost said _yes_ , but then he looked at the compass again. The photo inside the cover was still of Peggy, and yet the compass needle pointed in Natasha’s direction. The symbolism there wasn’t entirely lost on Steve. Symbols mattered in here, were real in a way he still didn’t fully understand. But it wasn’t as if he could be entirely sure which of the symbols were his doing or the Soul Stone’s. Was this some new trick or trap? He landed back on the ground, just in case.

“You didn’t answer my question. Does it matter how I love her?”

“It matters that you don’t lie to yourself about how you love her,” said the Soul Stone, straightforward for once. “Have you not realized yet? Lies, self-delusions: there’s no place for them in my realm, when you are stripped down to your very soul. Some souls fade fast, when all their lies and self-delusions are torn away. For other souls, the lies they tell themselves take pieces of them along with them when those lies fall apart. So consider your answer carefully, Steven Grant Rogers.”

“You’re being downright helpful for once,” said Steve, hedging to avoid answering the question.

The Soul Stone only echoed his own words. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Did Steve love Natasha? Of course he did. But when he tried to pin that love down, define it, it poured through his hands like water, abundant and necessary, easily shifting between states, ready to take on whatever form it was poured into. Partners, teammates, friends, family…Steve loved Natasha in all those ways. And yet, none of them quite felt like the whole truth.

If the Soul Stone had asked him how he loved Bucky, how he loved Sam, the answers would have come easily: Steve loved Bucky because loving Bucky was part of what made him Steve at all, and Steve loved Sam as a friend who’d become family.

When it came to _being_ in love...Steve would know, wouldn’t he, if he was in love? He had only ever been in love once, sure, but there had been no question about it. He’d started falling for Peggy more or less immediately, and it hadn’t taken long for the spark of attraction to turn into more, fanned into a steady flame with every meeting and mission and stolen moment, and that love and attraction hadn’t burned out, not even after decades. He loved Peggy still, even if he’d had to let her go.

 _She’d want you to move on, Steve,_ Natasha had told him once, after Peggy was gone. _I know_ , he’d said. _I am_. Natasha hadn’t seemed to believe him. With good reason. One awkward kiss and some stilted flirting with Sharon hadn’t exactly counted as moving on, and Steve hadn’t even tried since then.

Natasha had certainly wanted him to try. He remembered—

* * *

“She’s cute,” Natasha says, as the curvy waitress who’s just left Steve her number walks away with a flirty smile.

Steve’s over a hundred years old, but he’s not dead yet, and he’s got a libido: his eyes linger on the swell of her hips, the long dark fall of her hair. But it’s mostly an academic sort of appreciation, all theory. There are a lot of beautiful women in the world, and they’re all equally unattainable to Steve right now, no matter what Natasha says, and it’s not as if a pretty face has ever been enough to do much more than capture Steve’s fleeting aesthetic interest. 

_Such high standards,_ Bucky always used to tease. _A dame’s gotta have a pretty face and a winning personality, and be sharp as a tack to get your attention? Settle for two out of three, pal!_

When the waitress slips out of view, Steve drops cash on the table, and leaves the receipt with her phone number scrawled on it there too. He hopes the hefty tip will make up for any sting left by his not taking the waitress’s number. A pretty woman’s phone number wasn’t the goal of this particular outing, and today’s recon of the suspected arms runners’ front has been a bust. At least they got a good meal out of it.

“Not gonna keep that?” asks Natasha with a tip of her head. The pale gleam of sunshine on her now-platinum hair gives him a little jolt of surprise; the dye job is a necessary disguise, but Steve still finds himself missing the vibrancy of her red hair. The teasing quirk of her lips is fully familiar though, and Steve gives her a quelling look as they get up from the table and gather their things. 

“You can’t possibly still be trying to set me up on dates while we’re actual fugitives, Nat.”

“I just like to make sure your love life isn’t past saving, Steve,” she says, and tucks her arm into his. He puts his hand over hers, and they fall into step neatly and easily.

Her tone is light, but when he looks down at her, her eyes aren’t, their green gone muddy with the concerned tilt of her head. Natasha’s efforts to set him up on blind dates had started out as mostly teasing, a mild but insistent push to get Steve out and about instead of “moping” and “brooding” in his apartment. There’s not much hint of that teasing now, just unhappy concern.

“I haven’t exactly been in a place where I can think about my love life these last few years. Plus, we’re fugitives, remember? Isn’t romance an unacceptable security risk?”

“Some things are worth taking a risk for.” She slides a sly, sideways glance at him. “And who said anything about romance?”

“Well, sexual frustration isn’t really one of the things worth taking a risk for,” says Steve wryly, and Natasha gasps and clutches his arm in triumph.

“A ha! So you admit you’re sexually frustrated!”

“No comment. Why’s my love life or lack thereof so important to you, anyway? There’s about a hundred other things that oughta be higher up on our priority list.”

Natasha shrugs. “Just want to make sure you’re really living, that you’ve got something outside of all this. Look at Wanda, she and Vision are making it work, fugitive status or not.”

“They may be making it work, but it isn’t safe.”

“It’s a calculated risk,” counters Natasha. “The job, the fight—they shouldn’t be your whole life.”

“They’re not. I have you, and Sam, and Wanda, and Bucky. It’s enough,” says Steve, and he means it. Life on the run aside, this is enough, they’re enough. He has his health, he has a cause worth fighting for, he has his friends. He’s not lonely. But maybe Natasha is. Steve looks down at her again then, dismayed it’s taken him so long to even ask. “Is it—do _you_ need something outside of all this? Or do you, is there someone you—I know you and Bruce—”

“Me and Bruce…that was not my best idea. But no, I haven’t got a secret boyfriend,” says Natasha with a snort, shaking her head. “And no, I’m not interested in getting one either.” She smiles up at him then, small and bright, the sunlight catching the flecks of gold in her eyes. “This is enough for me too.”

He smiles back at her, relieved, and presses just a little bit closer to her. Natasha leans closer too, and in silent, mutual agreement, they walk back to the safe house like that, their pace downright leisurely. Yeah, this is enough, thinks Steve. He doesn’t need anything more.

* * *

“So…Leah from your mutual aid group.”

Steve looks up from dicing the potatoes for the roast, frowning. “What about Leah?”

“You two seem to get along well,” says Natasha almost absently as she leans down to peer into the oven, where their attempt at baking bread is hopefully going well.

“Yeah, we work together on some community projects,” says Steve slowly. “Why, did you need to talk to her about something?”

“Oh, no,” says Natasha breezily, standing again. “Just—you like her, right?”

Steve puts the knife down and stares at Natasha. “Seriously? Still?”

“What!”

“Not even the _end of the world_ is gonna stop you trying to set me up on a date? Natasha, come on!”

“If not the end of the world, then when? Steve, it’s been _years_ since Peggy—”

“Don’t—”

Natasha ignores him and continues, strident, “And we’re not on the run anymore, you’re retired from Avenging. There’s not going to be a better time. This is it, Steve. There’s nothing to hold out for, you gotta get yourself out there and find someone. I know it’s hard, I get it, but you shouldn’t be alone—”

“I don’t _want_ —” Steve sighs, frustrated. “I don’t need to go on dates, I don’t need a girlfriend. The life I’ve got now, it’s enough, alright?”

Natasha laughs, incredulous and bitter, eyes bright like the glint of a double-edged knife, slicing at both Steve and herself. “Bullshit, it’s enough. It’s just you and me, Steve.”

“Yeah, exactly. You and me, at the end of the world.” He reaches out across the kitchen island, takes Natasha’s hands, surprised all over again at how small they feel in his. She looms so big in his mind, taking up so much room that it’s always a small shock to find that she’s not so big as all that. “I’m not alone, I don’t need anyone else. I’d give anything to have the others back, but—this is—it’s enough, Natasha. We’re enough.”

Natasha grips his hands tightly and sniffs. Her lips wobble just once before she gets herself back under control. “Okay, but you could still go out on a date and have a one-night stand. Leah is into you.”

“I’m not a one-night stand kinda guy,” he says, and Natasha glares at him half-heartedly, making no move to pull her hands away from his. There’s something simultaneously fascinating and soothing about the way her warm hands are both soft and rough, with callouses that tell the silent story of her competence, along with a softness that’s not quite so carefully manicured anymore. 

“What, is it always true love or bust with you?” she asks.

“Kinda, yeah,” says Steve, and he’s sort of joking, but he’s sort of not. It seems like he’s always waiting for the right partner, unwilling to settle for fleeting satisfaction.

Natasha sighs, and finally smiles at him, sad and lopsided, but still sweet around the eyes.

“I just don’t want you to give up on happiness. Look at Tony and Pepper, they’ve got something good going, end of the world or not. You could have something like that too. There’s no point in punishing ourselves for surviving, it’s not what the others would’ve wanted for us.”

“Yeah, okay, and what about you?” he asks, which earns him a wry grimace from Natasha.

“Do as I say, not as I do?” she tries, before she admits, “I’ve got enough to deal with, with the orphanages and the command center. Even if I wanted to find someone—and I don’t—I wouldn’t have the time.”

Steve squeezes her hands, and is relieved when she squeezes back in her customary so tight it’s nearly punishing grip. “That’s alright. Who needs a love life anyway? We’ve got each other.”

“Yeah,” Natasha says, her voice dipping down low and rough enough to make Steve almost shiver.

She leans towards him, and he meets her halfway, forehead to forehead as she lifts their still-joined hands up to her lips. They stay like that for a moment, breathing together and holding on, his entire world collapsing gently into this bubble between and around them. If they tilted their heads just right, their lips would meet, and the thought sends a line of shivery, surprised heat down Steve’s spine. Maybe he does need to get laid, he thinks, and feels his face begin to heat with a blush. Then Steve’s nose twitches and he sniffs.

“I think our bread’s burning,” he whispers. “We are really not good at this cooking thing.”

Natasha closes her eyes, and shakes with helpless, silent laughter, and Steve joins her.

No, he doesn’t need a love life, or a one night stand. Living through the end of the world really clarifies those things you can live without, and yeah, living without some of those things is like learning to live with entire senses missing, or limbs cut off, but it can be done, Steve has been doing it. The loss of other things, Steve has hardly noticed, hasn’t mourned. So he knows: he doesn’t need blind dates or one night stands, he doesn’t need nights out at restaurants or dancing. He just needs this.

* * *

“Well?” asked the Soul Stone, and Steve found that he’d closed his eyes at some point.

When he opened them, nothing had changed: the Soul Stone was still the same landscape of amber and orange, but Steve himself—there was a light in and around his hands, a bright white flare that fizzed and sparked.

He and Natasha had kept telling each other, _you’re all I need, this is enough, you’re enough_. That, Steve was very belatedly realizing, probably meant something, something important.

“Fuck,” he muttered. “We’ve been idiots, haven’t we.”

“Hmm, you said it, not me. Is that the only epiphany you’ve had?”

He thought it over, carefully now, slowly, as if his own thoughts were some wild animal that would spook and bolt if he got too close.

What he felt for Natasha...it wasn’t the heady and pulse-pounding passion and need Steve had for Peggy, nor was it the sparks and flames that had caught between him and Peggy right from the start, no. This thing with Natasha, it was something that had grown slowly, maybe, with roots that just kept going deeper and deeper, year after year, tended by their own hands, kept watered even in the droughts of their grief, still bending towards the sun after so many long and terrible nights. Whether it could bloom into something new or not…Steve didn’t know, but he wanted to find out. He wanted to talk to Natasha, wanted to see her and hold her, wanted to show her this slow-growing but undeniable thing between them and ask her _do you see it too? Do you think we could try?_ He just plain _wanted_.

“Yeah—I mean, no,” said Steve. “I love her. I’m—I’m in love with her, I think.”

Just saying the words made the light pooling in his hands burn brighter, bright enough that he had to squint.

“You _think_?“ The Soul Stone sighed gustily. “Good enough.”

Steve almost asked _now what?_ But as he looked at his hands, he realized he knew. With nothing but the compass needle to follow, who knew how long it would take Steve to find Natasha, especially if they kept moving at cross-purposes. It seemed all too possible that he could keep chasing her trail until they both faded away in here, becoming ghosts eaten up by the Soul Stone. If he gave Natasha a sign though, a flare, then maybe they could find each other in all this vastness.

He closed his eyes, and thought of Natasha, exactly as he’d last seen her: her neat braid and sparkling green eyes, the playful and hopeful twist of her full lips, the happy and excited flush on her cheeks. He hadn’t imagined, then, that he would lose her. He couldn’t imagine it even now, didn’t want to. Instead, he imagined the home waiting for them, that dinner party Natasha wanted, the life they could build. He imagined kissing her, for real this time, and not just because _public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable_. The thought made a tremulous kind of warmth flicker and build inside of him, and then the warmth turned bright and bubbly, traveling to his hands to tinge the white light growing there as pink as a blush.

God, she was going to tease him so much for this. But that was alright. So long as she was there to tease him at all. She didn’t even need to feel the same way. She just had to come back.

 _C’mon, Natasha_ , he thought, _help me find you_ , and felt the light in his hands fizz and heat, like he was holding fireworks. So he thought of fighting at Natasha’s side, thought of the countless mission planning sessions, thought of cooking with her and going on walks with her and watching the terrible action movies she loved to heckle. He thought of her groan-worthy dad jokes and her teasing and her laughter. And the light in his hands kept getting brighter and brighter, and bigger and bigger, until it finally sparked up and away into the sky, where it turned into a firework, star-shaped and glittering.

 _Now that’s a flare,_ thought Steve with wondering satisfaction. He could only hope Natasha would look up and see it.

He checked the compass again, and watched as the needle moved slowly but surely in a new direction, as if Natasha wasn’t just wandering any more and now had a destination. He squinted back up at the sky and the new bright star floating there.

“Don’t suppose I could get that light to, I don’t know, spell out any words or anything?” he asked.

“No.”

* * *

Though Steve wanted to keep moving and meet Natasha halfway, the impracticality of that idea quickly became apparent. His flare didn’t move with him, and Steve had no idea what the distance between him and Natasha was right now. Steve could set out in her general direction, thanks to the compass, but if he was off by even a few degrees, he could end up missing her entirely, and then they’d be back where they started before Steve had sent a flare up. So Steve needed to sit tight and wait for her to find him.

It was the only logical course of action: he didn’t have to worry about dangerous conditions, or pursuit from enemies, or running out of supplies. There was no real reason to stay on the move. Staying put was the best option, and Steve knew Natasha, he knew she’d be making her way towards the flare because it was the only new thing in this whole monotone landscape. But staying put meant waiting, meant being patient, and those really weren’t Steve’s strong suits.

 _You can do this, Rogers, you’ve done much harder things_ , he told himself, and sat down directly under the bright light of his flare, which was still burning strong above him, like a firework caught in stasis, or an actual star. Resting was nice, for a few minutes at least. Then he got bored and fidgety, so he started fiddling with the semi-tangible cord of light that led back to his anchor and Bucky. Right about now, Steve really wished for some of Bucky’s fathomless well of patience, then he wondered what Bucky was doing right now, whether he was with Sam, whether they were okay, what if they were going on missions, were they safe, how were the other Avengers doing....

All those anxieties killed some time, but also made him restless, so he got up to pace, which didn’t help much.

“Just letting you know, were we within the linear flow of time, forty-seven Earth minutes would have passed since you first sat down,” the Soul Stone informed him sweetly.

“Fuck,” muttered Steve.

“I very much did not think this would be the hardest part of your quest,” marveled the Soul Stone. “And yet.”

“You know, I think I preferred it when you were just ominous and cryptic.”

“What can I say, I’m very impressionable, and you and your Natasha have been inside me for a while. I’ve picked up some things.”

Steve briefly considered worrying about that, before deciding that worrying was useless. He was already in here, he already knew the Soul Stone could see all of his soul. If all the Stone got out of it was an echo of his and Natasha’s more smart-mouthed tendencies, he’d count himself lucky.

“Great,” said Steve, then checked the compass again.

He turned until he was facing in the same direction as the compass needle, and sat back down with a sigh. He could do this, he could wait. He could trust that Natasha would find him. Natasha could do just about anything, of course she could make it to a landmark like the flare hanging in the sky, no matter what weird stuff the Soul Stone threw at her. And really, it was ridiculous that Steve was having trouble being patient for a few hours or even days, when Natasha had been patient and persistent for so much longer, in much worse circumstances. She’d held out for a way to save the world for five whole years. Waiting for her right now was the literal least Steve could do.

It was just that waiting was really boring.

Maybe Steve should’ve taken Bucky up on that offer to meditate with him that one time. Bucky always seemed to manage such perfect serenity while sitting still and doing absolutely nothing. Steve didn’t think he was capable of that, really, he was like Sam, he found his peace in running or doing something with his hands, but there was nothing to _do_ in here, and Steve honestly wasn’t sure how long he could hold out like this.

 _Just think of Natasha_ , he told himself. _You’re doing this for Natasha, to bring her back to life. And then you can tell her that you’re maybe kind of in love with her, and ask her if she’d like to set you up on a date, only with her this time instead of some stranger._

And okay, well, there was a whole new and exciting thing to panic about.

“Aren’t quests _fun_?” said the Soul Stone cheerfully, and Steve put his head in his hands and groaned.

* * *

Steve waited. He paced and did push ups and flew up into the sky near his flare and then he came back down to stare at his compass and waited some more. He silently debated asking the Soul Stone how long it had been, but decided it was better not to know, lest he get some deeply demoralizing answer like _it’s been two hours, you’re terrible at this_. So Steve sat tight and waited, eyes on the horizon, straining to see any hint of Natasha.

When he finally did, she was nothing but a tiny smudge of shadow against the Soul Stone’s too-level horizon. As much as he wanted to run to her, or hell, fly to her, he restrained himself and waited. She was still too far away, and Steve wouldn’t risk making her run from him, which she might well do if her caution overcame her curiosity. But god, it was hard, especially when she seemed to stop, the distant smudge growing no larger. Steve just kept staring, as intent and unblinking as he could manage, because what if she disappeared, what if this was some kind of mirage, and he only breathed a sigh of relief when he saw she was on the move again.

“That’s really her, right? It’s not some kind of trick?” he asked the Soul Stone.

“If it is a trick, it’s not one of my devising, Steven,” the Soul Stone answered, somewhat snippily. “I offer nothing but truth within me.”

Once Natasha was close enough that Steve could make out the red of her hair, Steve’s restless patience failed him.

“Fuck it,” he muttered, and got up. “Natasha! It’s me, Steve!” he shouted, and began to run towards her.

He kept a steady pace that was just shy of a sprint, and only slowed down once he was within shouting distance.

“Natasha!” he called out again. “It’s Steve, I’m here to get you out of here!”

Now that he was close enough, Steve could see her properly, and to his relief, this was finally _his_ Natasha: her red hair was in a somewhat bedraggled french braid, the tip a pale blond as if it had been dipped in paint, and her face was worn in a graceful sort of way, her eyes a shockingly bright green when set against the Soul Stone’s sameness. This was _Natasha_ , whole and complete, not some matryoshka version she’d shed and left behind. Maybe there was still another Natasha, tucked away safe and small and treasured inside this one, but that was alright. Steve didn’t need to see all of her selves and secrets laid bare. He just needed her.

He walked closer, slowly now that he was only a few yards away from her, and she matched his cautious pace as they approached each other.

“Natasha? Are you—are you okay?” he asked.

It was, he realized, a pretty dumb question. She was dead. Not for good, Steve hoped, but right now, she was dead, her soul preserved in the Soul Stone like a fly caught and crystallized in amber.

His dumb question made Natasha stop in her tracks, and she stared at him with disbelief that swiftly turned into fury.

“Am I okay,” she repeated with dangerous blankness. “You wear _that face_ and you ask me—don’t _fuck_ with me, you stupid, greedy _rock with delusions of grandeur_ —”

“Now, now,” chided the Soul Stone, but Steve interrupted it.

“It’s me, Natasha, not the Soul Stone. It’s really me,” he said, and Natasha shook her head.

Her voice was hoarse and ragged when she said, “No, _no_ , it’s not real, you’re not real!”

Steve reached for her, but she flinched and began backing away. How could he convince her? Damn it, Steve should have known this would happen, he should have prepared for it.

“I’m real, Natasha, I swear. I—I don’t know how to prove it to you, but I’m really here, I’m real.”

As if to undermine his point, Steve felt his body shift, shrinking back down to its pre-serum size. Natasha went still and watched with wide eyes, then she took one short step forwards, then another, as if she wanted to get close enough to touch but also wasn’t quite willing to risk it. Steve tried to focus, tried to will himself back into the form Natasha would recognize, only for his body to stay stubbornly small.

“Steve?” Natasha whispered, taking him in with an avid kind of desperation.

“Yeah. I, uh, know you’re not used to seeing me like this, but I swear, it’s me—”

She laughed, one short and jagged giggle before she clapped a hand over her mouth, then she closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, as if to calm herself down. She lowered her hand and opened her eyes again, dashing away the few tears that fell.

“How—what—what did you _do_? How are you here? Did you—did it not work, did we not get all of the Infinity Stones?” She looked horrified, and her face went stark white, bloodless. “Did you do it too, did you sacrifice yourself for the Soul Stone? Steve, tell me you didn’t—”

Jesus, Steve had entirely forgotten: Natasha didn’t know. Natasha had no idea about the second Thanos they’d fought, much less that they’d been successful in returning the lost to life, thanks to her. He smiled at her, aiming for comforting but probably landing on inappropriately relieved instead, but hell, he was so grateful to be able to share the good news with her.

“No, I didn’t sacrifice myself, I swear! I came to Vormir to return the Soul Stone, because we did it, we got all of the Stones. It _worked_ , Natasha. We brought everyone back. Bruce, he used the Stones with the Gauntlet, and he undid the Decimation.” He stepped closer to her, slow and careful. “But, uh, some other stuff happened, and—we lost Tony.”

Steve’s body shifted again, and judging from the expression on Natasha’s face, it was a pretty discomfiting sight.

“It’s really you,” she said, low and shaky.

“Yeah, it’s really me,” he said, and took another step towards her. If he reached out, he could touch her now, but he figured Natasha had to make the first move.

“And you’re here to, what, save me?” she asked, the words sharp and barbed, and then she shifted too.

With one liquid ripple and shimmer, Natasha changed, becoming that raw and hollow-cheeked teenaged version of Natasha, young and desperate, the Red Room’s ashes still clinging to her.

“I—yeah,” he said, off balance now.

He thought she’d left this version of herself behind, and yet here Natalia was, glaring at him. Steve got why she might not believe he was really here, but he hadn’t exactly been prepared for this frosty welcome.

“By _trading yourself_ for me?” she continued, and okay, that was Natasha’s deceptively mild and pleasant voice, the one that meant she thought he was being enormously stupid and she was furious about it. She changed again, into the Black Widow this time, in full uniform with her Widow’s bites humming and buzzing as if she was about to use them. “Because if that’s what you’re trying to do, you can go fuck yourself.”

Now Steve understood her hostility. She’d fought hard to make sure she was the only one who had to die for the Soul Stone. She’d never forgive him if he undid that to take her place. Never mind that Steve would consider that a fair trade, that bargain wasn’t on offer here.

“No! No, Natasha, of course not. I, uh, did a whole quest thing. The Soul Stone said if I could find you in here, then we could go, both of us, alive and well.”

“It was very impressive,” interjected the Soul Stone. “Haven’t had such a successful quest in eons! Well, I suppose it isn’t quite successful _yet_.”

“A quest,” Natasha said faintly. Her Widow’s bites dissolved away along with her uniform, leaving her in the flattering but neutral civilian clothes she tended to favor: tight jeans, a loose shirt, a leather jacket. It was an oddly dissonant look in the otherworldly Soul Stone, like the wrong kind of camouflage for the surroundings. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch. Well, there were some catches, I guess, but I handled them. We’ll lose a year and a day getting back, that’s all, and Sam and Bucky will be waiting for us. So c’mon, Natasha, please. Let’s get out of here.”

“What’s the _catch_ ,” she asked again, her voice rising. “Hey, rock, is he telling the truth? Or are you going to fuck one of us over? What _catches_ did Steve handle already?”

“Natasha—” started Steve, because surely they could have this conversation or fight or whatever when they were safely out of the Soul Stone, but too late, the Soul Stone interrupted him.

“He’s telling the truth!” it said, then added, “Mostly.”

“It’s that easy?” asked Natasha, her eyes narrowing dangerously. “He, what, returned you to Vormir and asked to bring me back to life, went on some quest, and you decided, sure, I’ll just give back the sacrifice I asked for, no big?”

“Okay, that’s kind of an oversimplification—”

“Well, it wasn’t _easy_ ,” said the Soul Stone, low and insinuating. “Would you like to know what the forfeit was, if he failed?”

“It’s not a big deal—” tried Steve, faintly desperate now, but Natasha was determined and cut him off.

“What was the forfeit?” asked Natasha, her eyes fixed on Steve, her expression warring between fury and despair as her appearance kept changing and shifting between all the different versions of her.

Steve thought she’d cast off these other selves, left them behind in the Soul Stone’s starving vastness, but now he realized that was wrong. Maybe you could never cast off the old versions of yourself. He’d called those shells matryoshka dolls, hollow and painted, and for some reason, he’d assumed the smallest, innermost doll was the “real” one. It wasn’t, of course. It was just the most hidden. A matryoshka doll wasn’t a matryoshka doll without all of its nested layers, and Natasha wasn’t Natasha without all her shifting forms, all her many selves, each of them like the facet of a single jewel.

 _The truth is a matter of circumstance_ , she’d told him, and he’d bristled at it then, taking it as a dodge and a deception, but now he knew it wasn’t. The truth of Natasha was the flickering and shifting of the soul standing in front of him. He wondered if he should look away, because surely this was even more invasive than seeing her naked, but he couldn’t make himself do it. This was _Natasha,_ and he didn’t love just one of her layers. He loved all of them, because they were all _her_. Of course he’d do whatever it took to save her, even if she thought it wasn’t work the risk.

“His soul, and yours,” said the Soul Stone. “That was the forfeit, had he failed.”

“Steve, you _idiot_ , how _could_ you—” demanded Natasha, her voice cracking on the words.

“How could I not? You spent five years trying to save half of the entire universe, and you never gave up. You think I could give up on you, after all that? You taught me better than that.”

She laughed, a bitter scrape of a sound, and she shifted into her coldest and most forbidding form, all Black Widow and no Natasha, every line of her body like a carefully calculated weapon, the red of her Widow’s hourglass symbol practically glowing. There was a shadow behind her, large and looming, and it had eight legs. Steve couldn’t suppress a shudder at the unsettling sight, and Natasha sneered.

“I’m not worth that, Steve! I did this for half of the entire universe, and you—you’re risking _everything you are_ for _me_? Look at me, for fuck’s sake, even I can’t decide who I am!”

She changed and changed, faster and faster, like a film in fast forward, until she was standing in front of him, so tense she was shaking, wild-eyed and ferocious and terrified, blood dripping from her small white hands, and tear tracks on her face. Yeah, this was Natasha too, thought Steve, feeling practically flayed with tenderness for her.

“That’s alright,” he told her. “I still know you.”

“You know _this_? All this blood on my hands, all the shit I’ve done—”

“I know what I need to know,” he said. “And I know that blood on your hands, that red in your ledger—Natasha, you just helped save _half of the entire universe_. You gave _your life_ for that. Penance, atonement, call it whatever you want, but you’ve got it. You gotta know that.”

The tension making Natasha shake melted away, and so did the blood on her hands. She shifted again, her hair returning to its short blond bob.

“Oh,” she said, her face going soft with wonder and an almost giddy fear before she shook them off with one sharp jerk of her head. “But that doesn’t mean you should’ve risked everything for me.”

“I wanted to,” said Steve, helplessly honest.

“ _Why_? Why do all this for me, and not Tony? He—he has a wife, a child, they need him, you should get _him_ back. I’m just—”

“Natasha. You’re _Natasha_ , and—call me selfish, but I had all these Infinity Stones and a goddamn time machine, more power than any one person should ever have, and all I could think was that I had to try to save you, that I couldn’t let you go. Because—because I need _you_.”

Natasha smiled, a jagged and trembling curve of her lips, and changed again, looking much as she had the last time he’d seen her, aglow with hope, though now her shoulders were slumped with exhaustion too.

“Which me?” she asked.

He took the last couple of steps needed to close the distance between them. “Any of them. All of them. It doesn’t matter to me, Natasha. It’s—it’s like those Russian dolls you showed me once, matryoshka.”

Her brow furrowed and she frowned, but she didn’t move away from him, so he drew her in. He put his arms around her, light and gentle at first, until Natasha gripped him tight, and then they were both clinging to each other.

“I remember,” she said, so softly he could barely hear her. Even in his arms, her form kept shifting and changing, and it felt strange, like a shivery tickle. He held on tightly anyway. It wasn’t like it hurt, and when Steve changed himself, they both laughed at being almost the same height for once, before Natasha prompted him, “Matryoshka?”

Steve continued, “They’re made up of all those individual dolls that fit into each other. Without the layers, it’s not a matryoshka, it’s just—it’s just a pretty, hollow doll. Or one tiny wooden figurine. You have to have the whole thing, with all the layers.”

“It’s a pretty metaphor,” said Natasha softly.

“It’s how I feel,” he said, though it was barely scratching the surface of how he felt. He could have told her so much more, could have said he loved her, but he didn’t want the Soul Stone to have that. “I _know_ you, Natasha. You can’t talk me out of wanting to save you. So come on. Let’s go home.”

“Alright,” she whispered, and looked up at him, her beloved face familiar and lovely through all its shifting changes. “Let’s go home.”

“ _Finally_ ,” proclaimed the Soul Stone. “Congratulations, quest complete!”

Before Steve could ask any last questions, like how exactly he should return the Soul Stone or what they needed to do next, an amber glow built around and through them until it overtook everything. The transition out of the Soul Stone was far slower than the one into it, and Steve felt it, as Sam’s wings fell away and the line anchoring him went taut with tension, until even those sensations fell away, leaving only the warmth of Natasha in his arms, alive and whole.

* * *

When the light faded, they were back on Vormir, and still holding each other close. Only now, Steve was in his quantum suit again, no wings or cords of light in sight, in a body that wouldn’t keep shifting and changing forms so rapidly, while Natasha looked just as she had when she’d left for Vormir, albeit a lot more worn and bedraggled. She still looked perfect. Steve suspected he looked far rougher; all the time he’d spent to return the Infinity Stones and whatever time he’d spent in the Soul Stone were catching up with him now in one pummeling wave of exhaustion. Exhausted or not, he still felt better than he had in years: lighter, as if the weights he’d shed in the Soul Stone had in fact been real and tangible.

For a long, silent minute, Steve and Natasha just stared at each other, taking each other in, mutually overwhelmed at the reality that they’d both made it, that they were alive.

At least, that was what Steve was overwhelmed by. He wasn’t sure what emotion was lighting Natasha’s eyes right now, didn’t know why she was looking at him so intently, with a scrutiny that was softer and gentler than her usual sharp attention. Did she know about Steve being in love with her? Could she tell? It wouldn’t surprise him if she could, because even outside of the Soul Stone, he suspected his soul was always laid bare to Natasha.

Still, after all that scrutiny, all Natasha said was, “Hi.”

She practically glowed under the faint orange light of Vormir’s stormy skies, like she was the only thing in bright, living color in the whole bitterly dark landscape. The hair that had escaped her braid made her shine even more, each auburn strand catching what light there was and turning it into a kind of saint’s halo.

“Hey,” he said, after a long enough pause that the word clunked heavily between them. He swallowed hard, continued, “Are you—you’re okay, right?”

She was certainly reassuringly solid and warm in his arms, and he didn’t see any evidence of any injuries. It was as if she’d never fallen from the cliff at all, apart from the wear and tear on her uniform. Natasha seemed to reach the same conclusion, because she laughed in wonder and relief, and dimpled up at him, her eyes sparkling even in the dim light of Vormir’s weak sun.

“I’m alive! I was definitely dead, and now I’m definitely not, so yeah, Steve, I’m okay. Are _you_ alright? I wouldn’t put it past that dumb rock to fuck us over now.”

“You’re alive,” he echoed, and tears of relief and joy pricked at his eyes. “That means I’m—I’m great, I’m perfect.”

Natasha studied him carefully, still with that same terribly tender focus, and brought her hand up to his cheek, which to Steve’s surprise, was bearded again. How long had it been since he’d stepped onto the quantum tunnel platform? His timeline was so full of loops and knots now, he couldn’t even begin to figure it out.

Well, he was alive, and Natasha was alive, and that was all that mattered. The impossible reality of it overtook him all of a sudden, and he covered her hand with his own, and held on tight. Maybe reality was kind of overwhelming for Natasha too right now, because she blinked rapidly a few times, tears catching on her pale lashes, before she turned her head and brought his hand to her lips, laying one warm and soft kiss against his rough knuckles. If they’d still been in the Soul Stone, Steve was certain that kiss would have left a mark, deeper and more permanent than any scar or callous he’d earned from fighting. Or maybe the imprint of her lips on his hand would have bloomed, sending spring-green tendrils up his arms to trace his veins, until they reached his heart and took deeper root there.

They breathed together in silence for a long moment, a silent affirmation: _I’m alive, you’re alive, we are going home._ Eventually, Natasha pulled away a little, steadier now.

“No more wings,” she noted, after peering behind his back. “And no more glow-y rope thing either. What was all that about anyway?”

“Those were symbols, I guess. Part of the, y’know, quest, how Sam and Bucky helped me. I couldn’t have done it, or found you, without them. Though I couldn’t really tell them that’s what I was doing, not then. Time travel and all. I left them a message though, hopefully they’ll have gotten it in 2024.”

“And that shiny white star, what was that?” pressed Natasha. “Another symbol?”

Steve swallowed hard and tried not to fidget. “Uh, yeah, I guess. I had a compass pointing me to you, but I figured I needed a way to help you find me, otherwise I could’ve ended up chasing after you forever in there.”

Natasha narrowed her eyes slightly and hummed, but she seemed willing to let it go for now, because all she said was, “Well thanks for that, it worked. And it was pretty too. So it’s over now? No twists, no catch, we’re free and clear?”

Shit, Steve had almost forgotten he still had the damn Soul Stone. Where even was it, he wasn’t holding it—a stinging flare of heat in his pocket made him startle, and Steve slapped at his now glowing uniform pocket.

_Hey now, I keep my word! Now, if you could just toss me over the cliff, I’ll return you two to the appropriate time and place. The only price remaining to be paid is your year and a day._

“The only catch is that the Soul Stone is going to return to us to our timeline a year and a day after I left, and I already knew about that. So: you ready to go home?”

“Yeah. Yeah, let’s go home. Just—let me do something, first,” said Natasha, then she held his face in her hands, her expression oddly solemn and nervous, her lips trembling just a little. Steve went still under her touch, and she took a deep breath. “Thank you. For more things than I can ever say, but we can start with this: thank you for going on a ridiculous, dangerous quest to save my life. Thank you for not giving up on me.”

Then she rose up on her tiptoes, and kissed him.

If the press of her lips to his hand was spring’s first bloom, this was summer in all its hot and heady glory. Though her lips were soft, Natasha held nothing back, kissing him with abandon, as sure and bold in this as she was when she was asking him to launch her into the air at their enemies. Steve matched her with all his long-denied adoration, kissing her and kissing her, until they were gasping and artless, and impossibly, perfectly alive.

“ _Must_ you?” came an aggrieved voice. “Must you constantly plunge me into ever deeper and more cruel hells?!”

Yeah, no, not even the goddamn Red Skull was going to ruin this for him.

“Fuck off, Schmidt,” Steve said, and smiled dopily down at Natasha, who beamed right back up at him. He pulled the Soul Stone out of his pocket and put it in her hand. “You wanna do the honors? Apparently all we gotta do is toss it off the cliff.”

“It would be my pleasure,” she said, and they went to the cliff’s edge, hand in hand.

 _You’ve done well, Steven Grant Rogers. Your quest is complete,_ said the Soul Stone, and then Natasha pitched the Soul Stone out into the gloomy expanse of Vormir’s landscape. The further it got from them, the brighter it glowed, and before they could see the Soul Stone fall, the light overtook them in one gentle and inexorable wave, like falling asleep under the light of a sweet summer sun.

* * *

When the light of the Soul Stone faded, Steve and Natasha were on the sidewalk in front of Natasha’s brownstone in Brooklyn. It was early evening, the last light of sunset still coloring the sky in soft shades of pink and purple, and the cozy residential street was mostly quiet.

“Oh,” said Natasha, soft and quiet. “Are we—this counts as home?”

“That’s what you wanted it to be, right?” asked Steve gently, and Natasha nodded, blinking rapidly. “I, uh. I left Sam and Bucky a message here, before I went to Vormir. I hope they got it, but they might not be here,” he continued, downright rambling now. “I mean, they could be at the Tower, or at the Compound, Bucky could be in Wakanda, and Sam might be in D.C., and in the video I left them, I never said anything about them staying here—shit, I should have, shouldn’t I, I should’ve told them—”

Natasha put a finger over his lips, her own curving upwards into a smile. “Steve, shut up and _look_. The lights are on.”

So Steve looked, and saw that she was right: the bay windows looking out into the street were lit with warm yellow light, just visible through the curtains. The curtains that hadn’t been there, when Steve had left his message. And hadn’t he asked Sam and Bucky to leave a light on for them? He tried not to read too much into a light literally being on, and failed.

“Could be squatters,” he said, because that hadn’t exactly been uncommon after the Decimation, and also because he really needed to manage his expectations here to avoid collapsing in exhaustion and disappointment if Sam and Bucky weren’t in there.

“Awfully considerate squatters if so,” said Natasha with a snort. Then she grabbed his hand and pulled him along with her as she rushed up the stairs to the front door.

She let go of his hand to reach up to a brick next to the door, carefully prying it loose and pulling something out from behind it. The key to the front door, obviously. Well, that would have been easier than breaking into the brownstone to leave his message.

“Maybe we should just ring the bell, or knock,” he said, but Natasha ignored him and slid the key into the lock, which turned smoothly and easily.

She turned back to him, raising an eyebrow in a silent _see? Not squatters_. Steve wrinkled his nose at her, not willing to concede the possibility just yet, and she rolled her eyes.

When they stepped inside, the sound of music and the murmur of voices reached them, and only once Steve recognized the strains of Motown did he let himself really begin to believe that they were home, that Sam and Bucky were waiting for them in this house, where they’d kept a light on for Steve and Natasha.

They still moved through the house quietly though, Natasha by sheer habit, and Steve on the off-chance that it wasn’t Sam and Bucky waiting for them after all. If some surprised civilian came at him with a baseball bat right about now, Steve honestly wasn’t sure he’d have the energy to fight them off.

As they crept through the house, Steve saw that it was much changed from when he’d seen it last. The walls were painted in shades Steve recognized from the cans of paint that had been here back in 2019, and there were plush rugs on the hardwood floors, along with framed prints and paintings on the walls in rich and bright colors. In the art, Steve recognized Sam’s preference for bold lines, Bucky’s love of detailed landscapes. When he peeked into the living room, he saw that it was full of furniture: inviting and cozy couches that complemented the armchairs Natasha had left here, a wooden coffee table that looked handmade, a big TV. If Natasha had left this place as a barebones sketch of a home, then Sam and Bucky had filled it in with color and detail, turning potential into reality.

“Wow,” murmured Natasha, taking it all in with an almost shy pleasure.

The smell of frying onions and spices drifted on the air, and in silent agreement, Steve and Natasha continued on towards the kitchen, where both the music and the delicious smell were coming from.

The sight that greeted them there nearly brought Steve to his knees in sheer relief and joy, and made Natasha suck in a surprised breath that came back out somewhere between a happy sigh and a laugh. Because Sam and Bucky were there in the kitchen, whole and alive and smiling in each other’s arms, swaying gently to the music that was still playing. And not just that, but they were kissing, deep and easy, like it was their thousandth kiss, and they expected to share thousands more.

Steve sure as hell hadn’t expected this, but god, he was happy to see it, and he had to grasp at Natasha’s hand to keep himself steady. He exchanged a quick _you seeing this too_ glance with Natasha, and the wide and teary smile on her face was answer enough. Steve would have been overjoyed to find Sam and Bucky safe and sound in 2025; to find them not just safe, but _happy_ , and seemingly happy with each other...that made Steve’s heart so full and bright that he wouldn’t have been shocked to see it floating over his head like a lit-up balloon.

“I hate to interrupt such a pretty sight, boys, but I think that pot’s about to boil over,” Natasha said, the barest tremor in her voice.

Sam and Bucky sprung apart with comical speed, turning to stare at Steve and Natasha. They were wide-eyed with a mix of hope and disbelief so strong it was almost painful to see.

“Steve?” said Bucky, and for a fleeting second, Steve swore he could feel that symbolic line anchoring him to Bucky’s faith tugging hard, as if Bucky was reeling him into safe harbor after a long, long journey. But Steve felt weightless too, like he still had Sam’s wings and could soar up on the updraft of their collective joy.

Natasha squeezed his hand tightly, and he squeezed right back. It had to be just their skin building up this heat between them, nothing more than flesh and blood, and yet it was as if they were holding onto something bright and burning together, something that kept getting brighter even when they separated to reunite with Bucky and Sam.

Between the hugs and the explanations and the tears of joy, Steve and Natasha’s eyes kept meeting, and each time, Steve was struck by happiness as if it was a lightning bolt, each world-illuminating flash turning him into a conduit for joy, all the grief of the last five years transmuting and transforming, as if it was sand becoming glass. Steve thought Natasha must have felt a lot like he did, because as the night went on and they all caught each other up on the last year, her smile didn’t fade. She kept a tight grip on his hand too, and stayed pressed against his side on the ridiculously comfortable living room couch.

Sam noticed, of course. He and Bucky were more or less in each other’s laps, cuddled up close in a way that Steve found almost too adorable to stand, and he nodded in the direction of Steve and Natasha’s tightly clasped hands.

“So, you got an update on me and Bucky’s love life on account of how you walked in on us making out. How about yours?”

Steve’s face went hot with a blush that practically glowed, and that was answer enough for Bucky, apparently, because he beamed at Steve.

“Uh, that’s, you know, a lot’s happened—” he stammered out.

Natasha leaned her head on his shoulder. “Yeah, Steve went on this big romantic fairy tale quest to save my life, and I think we both had some, you know, personal revelations. Like how maybe instead of constantly trying to get Steve to date someone else, I should just do it myself.”

“ _That’s_ your take away from my big romantic quest to save your life?” asked Steve, charmed and frustrated in equal measure.

Natasha just smiled up at him with wicked sweetness. “I mean, am I wrong?”

“No,” conceded Steve, and he couldn’t help but smile back at her, and then, because he could, because they were actually doing this now, he kissed her.

And though they were sitting on a couch in Brooklyn with his two best friends watching, and he was so exhausted he could barely see straight, big romantic fairy tale sounded about right. As he learned the shape and taste of joy on Natasha’s lips, while they sat safe and warm in the home her hope had built for them, it sure as hell felt a lot like happily ever after.


End file.
